


Iron & Irony: Second Encounters

by Veldeia



Category: House M.D., Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-16
Updated: 2008-11-16
Packaged: 2018-03-31 08:17:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3970669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veldeia/pseuds/Veldeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper and House get kidnapped, and it's up to Tony and Rhodey to find and rescue them. Of course, it's easier said than done...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "Worried?"

As soon as he reached the site, Tony knew something was amiss.

He met only light resistance. A few men, armed with a seemingly random collection of submachine guns and pistols - nothing that would be any good against his suit. It was odd - if these people were careless enough to display crates with the Stark Industries logo openly in front of TV cameras, they should've known to expect him. After all, it was a generally-known fact by now that showing around SI weapons was a sure way to gain a visit from Iron Man.

It was more than possible that this was a trap, and that there was a whole army hidden in the mountainous terrain, or in the building these few sorry souls were guarding. It took Tony maybe about five minutes to deal with the five of them. Then he blasted open the door, eyed the entrance suspiciously for a moment, and stepped in.

It was a small warehouse, slightly bigger than his workshop, and it was completely empty, except for three crates with the SI logo, possibly the very ones he'd seen in the news. He scanned them. There was nothing in them.

There was definitely something strange going on here.

He walked to the crates and opened the nearest one. It was just as the scans showed, completely empty. He scanned the building again, expecting to find something dangerous - a bomb, a chemical weapon, maybe even a biological weapon. Instead, the suit sensors showed nothing out of the usual anywhere around him. An empty room with a dirt floor and walls and ceiling of corrugated iron, and three empty crates.

"I don't get it," Tony said aloud. "Why would they lure me here just to have me shoot at a few random hirelings?"

"Sadistic tendencies, perhaps?" Jarvis answered, taking Tony completely by surprise.

"Jarvis, is it just me or is your sense of humor getting worse by the day? I may need to do something about it."

"I apologize for the inconvenience, sir."

"Anyway, since this doesn't look like a trap, this obviously wasn't about harming me, so what would they gain from me being here instead of... Damn!" He should've realized it right away. He hurried out of the building and took off instantly. "They didn't want me here in particular, they just wanted me away from home," he told Jarvis as he gained altitude. "Don't know why, yet, but it can't be anything good."

It was only a half an hour's flight back to his waiting jet, but the trip from Eastern Europe to California would take a good fourteen hours. For a passing moment, he actually considered crossing the distance in the suit, it'd be faster - but no, he would avoid spending that long in it if he could. Besides, he hadn't heard about any problems at home yet. Maybe he had guessed wrong.

So, instead of sweating and suffering in his suit, he spent the half-day long return trip slouching half-asleep on a very comfortable couch. These excursions tended to leave him incredibly tired, and it was no wonder. Jet lag from usual business trips was one thing. He was so used to it that it rarely bothered him at all. Flying to the other side of the globe for a few hours' mission and then returning right away was something else entirely.

Somewhere over the vast blue expanse of the Atlantic he was suddenly struck by a sense of foreboding. It came out of nowhere, really. He had no reason to assume it was her they were after, there were many other people and things they could've chosen to target, but still...

"Jarvis, where's Pepper?"

"I'm afraid Miss Potts's current whereabouts are unknown, sir. However, as it's currently Sunday afternoon in California, that is to be expected."

All right, no need to freak out. Jarvis would only know where she was if she was at the mansion or the office. Since it was Sunday, there was no reason for her to be at work, especially when he wasn't there. She was probably at the beach, or jogging, or out meeting friends, or at home watching TV, or whatever. She had no obligation whatsoever to inform him of her comings and goings.

He tried calling her, but she didn't answer. 

That didn't mean a thing, either. Might be that she was just avoiding him for some reason. In spite of what had happened at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital a month ago, Pepper still kept her distance, no matter what he did. Neither roses and romantic sweet-talking nor straightforward dirty suggestions had gotten him anywhere. Ah, well. He knew she loved him, she had said so herself. She was just playing hard to get. Sooner or later, she would break. It was inevitable. He sort of enjoyed the game, although he was getting impatient - and right now, a bit worried.

He asked Jarvis about Pepper's whereabouts half a dozen times during the remainder of the flight, but there was no news. He called her a few more times, but got no answer. He also called Rhodey and Happy, who both answered, but neither had seen Pepper since yesterday.

Once he was finally home again, Tony gave the suit a quick once-over - no damage worth mentioning. He climbed upstairs and sat on the sofa, scratching his goatee thoughtfully. It was 3 AM, so Pepper wouldn't be here in a while even if everything was perfectly normal. He could catch a nap. Or then again, maybe not, since he seriously doubted he'd be able to sleep, as tired as he was. He poured himself four fingers of whiskey and returned to his shop to try and distract himself with work.

He woke up at 6.30, with a set of funny red marks on his cheek where it had rested on the keyboard. Pepper usually showed up at 7 AM on workdays. Since yesterday had been Sunday, today was Monday, so he wouldn't need to wait much longer.

Unreasonably nervous, Tony made his way upstairs and sat on the sofa again. He turned on the TV and stared at the screen, perfectly oblivious to whatever was on.

At 7.30, he picked up his cell phone and called her once more - still no answer.

Pepper was never late. He was seriously starting to get worried here.

  


* * *

  


It was perfectly normal for House to be late, but Foreman thought two hours was really pushing it.

They were drinking their third cups of coffee, the new team still discussing last week's patients. The case itself hadn't been all that interesting. It was plain to everyone that House had only picked it because of the patients: a rare example of dicephalic parapagus conjoined twins - in layman's terms, Siamese twins with two feet, two hands and two heads.

"I still can't believe how perfectly they coordinated their actions, I mean, one controls the left hand, the other has the right, and still they're able to tie their shoelaces," Kutner said.

"Well, they've had plenty of time to practice, seeing as they've been stuck together for over twenty years," Taub noted.

Thirteen, like Foreman himself, seemed slightly distracted. "Should we be getting worried?" she asked, looking at him.

"Worried? No. Irritated? Definitely. I'll try calling him again," Foreman decided, and dialed House's cell phone for the fourth time that morning. No answer. He tried House's landline phone too, but only reached the annoying answering machine. He shook his head. "If he's avoiding work, at least he could've given us an advance warning so we wouldn't waste our time waiting for him."

"Well, seeing as we're basically getting paid for sitting around and drinking coffee, it's really not that bad," Taub said.

Thirteen ignored him, her attention still on Foreman. "We don't even have a case right now. What're we supposed to do?"

That was a very good question, and one that Foreman couldn't answer on his own. He stood up. "I'll tell you what. We've been waiting long enough. I'm going to talk to Cuddy, tell her House's gone AWOL, and see if she's got a patient for us. In the meantime, do what you want. Go to the cafeteria or something. I'll page you when I've got news."

He didn't go straight to Cuddy's office, but took a detour to stop by at Wilson's. If there was anyone in the hospital who might have a clue about House's latest crazy schemes, it was Wilson.

"No, I haven't seen him today," Wilson replied, frowning. His expression kept growing more concerned as he went on, "Last time I saw him was Saturday night. Now that you mention it, I haven't heard from him since. I'm... Well, you know, I was pretty drunk, but I think he was, too, and he was driving..."

"It doesn't have to mean anything," Foreman said reassuringly. It was House they were talking about, after all. No way he was going to start worrying yet. "I'm sure he'll show up soon enough."

  


* * *

  


Pepper sighed and shook her head as she watched Tony's jet take off once again. Since it was an Iron Man mission, he had adamantly refused to take her along. It was a typical enough case: he had spotted a group of terrorists carrying a crate with his name on it in the news, and now he was off to some middle-of-nowhere place in Russia to deal with them. It'd take him fourteen hours to reach his target and another fourteen to return, so he'd be away for at least a day. With him gone and her work hours over long ago, she had nothing to do but go home and try to get some sleep.

Typically enough, she couldn't stop thinking about Tony as she drove homewards. She was awfully anxious, like every single time he left on a mission. Tomorrow would be a very long day. She didn't know who she was kidding, trying to keep her distance from him. Definitely not him, since he obviously knew how she felt, and clearly not herself, because her emotions were already those of the superhero's suffering girlfriend. Then again, considering what a nervous wreck his missions already made her, getting into any sort of a real relationship with him would only make things worse. It might be wonderful for a while, but it could only end in tears. Not to mention the media repercussions, and the effects it would have on their working relationship, and so on. She'd be crazy to do that to herself.

Her thoughts were still somewhere far away with Tony when she got out of the car and started walking towards her front gate. Because of that, she only saw the two hooded thugs when they were almost by her sides. When she finally did notice them, it occurred to her that it was often the part of the superhero's girlfriend to get into trouble, so that the hero could save her.

Of course, she wasn't Tony's girlfriend, and she had no intention of getting into trouble.

She dashed towards the gate, knowing full well that the men wouldn't expect such fast action from a girl in a short skirt and high heels. She managed to get the lock open, made it to the yard, ran without bothering to close the gate behind her - and almost crashed into two more cronies, who were waiting for her right in front of the door.

"Potts, you're outnumbered. You can't run from us. Things will be far easier and more pleasant for you if you just cooperate," one of the crooks said in a pleasant, casual voice, with a slight foreign accent she couldn't recognize.

They knew her name. That fact made her panic rise to even greater heights. It was a pretty good clue that they did have something to do with her being Iron Man's personal assistant, and that this was something worse than random assault.

She turned around. It was around 10 PM, the street was empty, and the four thugs had her surrounded. Realizing it was what she should've done right away, she opened her mouth to scream for help. She didn't get out as much as a squeak before one of the men stepped closer and covered her face with a wet rag that had a vaguely sweet chemical smell.

It seemed she was going to play her part, whether she wanted to or not. Tony had better play his, too, she thought, as the world faded to black.

  


* * *

  


"My condolences," House told Amber, as he handed the dead-drunk Wilson over to her at their door. No sweet, sweet love for those two tonight, that much was for sure.

To his annoyance, the glance she gave him wasn't full of venom, but more of something like pity. A holier-than-thou-look, saying that she found it pathetic that he'd resort to something as childish as this just to get to her.

"Hope you had fun," Amber said, and slammed the door shut.

"Hey, I need to pay for the cab," he shouted, and rapped on the door with his cane, but she was ignoring him. Well, it was worth a try anyway.

He limped back to this car, settled behind the wheel and headed home. He was nowhere near drunk enough that it'd keep him from driving. He couldn't help looking back nervously every now and then, but it wasn't because he was afraid of the police catching him DUI. No, it was something far more interesting than that.

During the last few days, House had constantly had the feeling that someone was tailing him. Someone really skilled, too. He had only noticed them because he was good at spotting tiny details that others missed. Of course, if a patient had come to House explaining that they were being shadowed like this, he'd have labeled them psychotic right away. Still, he knew his mind, and he was pretty sure he wasn't losing it.

There, he saw them: a black car following him discreetly from a distance, headlights off. Who could it be? Another patient he'd pissed off? An over-eager detective? Either of those, it wouldn't even be the first time.

As curious as he was, House figured he'd be better off avoiding whoever it was. He took an unexpected turn to the left, and drove through a series of small, maze-like side streets, taking advantage of his knowledge of the area. Soon, he couldn't see the following car anymore. If they didn't know where he lived, he'd have lost them by now.

Maybe he was drunk and paranoid, but once he'd stopped the car as near to the door as possible, he took the time to write a note, which he left on the front seat. Just in case.

He got out of the car and eyed the empty street suspiciously. No sign of anything out of the usual. Either he had lost them, or there was no "them", and he was just so out of it that he had imagined the whole thing.

He stepped into the hallway - and that was as far as he got. He never even managed to open the door to his apartment, because they were already waiting for him. He hadn't lost them, they had gotten ahead of him. There were three men, dressed in black, with hoods shadowing their faces. None of them were taller than him, but they were all burlier, and obviously, unlike him, they were stone-sober.

"Doctor House, you will come with us," one of them told him bluntly, in a clearly Eastern-European accent. "Save yourself the trouble and do not resist."

Whatever they were up to, it couldn't be anything good, and House definitely wasn't going to go without a fight. He didn't bother waiting for the bad guys to make the first move. He whacked the nearest one with his cane. He felt it hit, but didn't gain as much as a grunt from the thug. He might as well have attacked one of the walls.

Strong hands gripped his arms, wrenched the cane away from him and forced him to stay still. One of the thugs slapped a cloth over his mouth and nose. He had barely enough time to wonder what they were using - chloroform, desflurane, something exotic he had never even heard of? - before he lost consciousness.


	2. "What's going on?"

At 9 AM, Tony decided it was official: Pepper wasn't just late, she was missing. According to Jarvis, she hadn't shown up at the mansion or the office since he'd left the country, the day before yesterday.

Tony figured he'd better look into this some more on his own before going to the authorities. On the one hand, there might be an entirely natural explanation to this and he could be overreacting, on the other there was always the chance that this was Iron Man stuff. If that was the case, he'd be better off calling S.H.I.E.L.D. instead of the cops.

The first call he made was the obvious one, though. He called Pepper once more. He wasn't expecting anything, but still, every time the phone rang with no answer made him feel a tiny bit more anxious. Then, someone answered.

"Good morning, this is Leanne from Los Angeles International Airport. You wouldn't happen to know the owner of this phone?"

"Yes! You probably got my name from the caller ID already, so -"

"Mr. Stark? Really?"

"No, it's one of those celebrity prank call things."

"Oh, all right, I..."

"You've never heard of sarcasm, have you? Of course it's really me. The smartphone you're currently holding belongs to my personal assistant. Where did you find it?"

The cheerful alto voice at the other end of the phone suddenly sounded a lot more nervous when the girl spoke again. "Oh, my, I'm actually talking to Tony Stark... Let's see... Uh... One of our maintenance workers found the phone in a trash can yesterday -"

"Okay, wait, that's enough," Tony interrupted her. "I'm coming over there myself. Don't let anyone touch that phone, and find the maintenance guy for me. I'll be there before you can blink. Just give me your exact location."

As soon as the girl had managed to stutter the directions, Tony hung up on her. Suit or car, then, was the next big question. Suit, he decided. It was nine o'clock in the morning, after all, and he might get stuck in the commuter traffic if he drove.

"Sir, I would advise against it," Jarvis complained, when Tony walked over to the platform to suit up. "First of all, it will draw an unwanted amount of attention. Secondly, you've only slept a few hours, and judging from when you last had a drink, there's still alcohol in your bloodstream."

"So, obviously I can't drive, that would be DUI and illegal. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure there's no law against flying around in high-tech armor when hung over."

"There isn't. However, skiing while under the influence is prohibited in Wyoming."

"Huh? All right, that does it, I seriously need to do something about your humor - but it'll have to wait. Pepper could be in trouble. I'm going."

It wasn't as if Jarvis could've stopped him anyway. He got into the suit and took off.

The maintenance worker who had found the Blackberry proved to be an extremely edgy teenager named Ned. Facing Iron Man probably didn't make him any less nervous. He pointed at a standard trash can in some random hallway, and stuttered, "Th-there it is, it was in there."

"And it didn't occur to your underdeveloped, underage brain to go through the rest of the stuff, in case there were more misplaced belongings in there?"

"S-sorry, Mr. Stark, sir, n-no, I was just doing my job, and..."

"Whatever. Forget it. Expect to be contacted about this later," Tony said, scaring the hell out of the poor kid, and headed to the lost and found office to pick up Pepper's Blackberry. He placed it in a sample bag, even though the hopes of actually finding any fingerprints or other useful evidence on it were practically nonexistent.

He couldn't think of any circumstances that could possibly make her dump her phone like that. The more he considered it, the more convinced he got that this could be nothing other than a kidnapping. He was also certain that it was all his fault. They had lured him away from home so he wouldn't be around to stop them from taking her, whoever they were. That being the case, bringing in the regular police and making a big noise about this would probably be a bad move. Instead, he took off and headed towards the local S.H.I.E.L.D. office.

He had just left the airport behind, when he got the day's first phone call. It was Happy.

"What?" Tony answered irritably.

"Good morning, boss! Did Jarvis forget your wake-up call?"

"I'm wide awake. I'm in the suit, flying over L.A."

"Huh? What for? I was supposed to pick you up at eleven for the meeting with R & D!"

"Oh, I had a meeting scheduled? Well, I'm not going. Cancel it."

"Me? I can't do that, it's Pepper's job."

"Which is exactly why I need you to cancel it. She's missing. If you can't do it, then find someone who can. Clear my entire schedule for today."

"Pepper's... Oh, no! But Tony -"

"No buts, Happy. This is more important than anything else. Don't call me again unless it's something absolutely cataclysmic."

"Sure thing, boss," Happy said, sounding decidedly unhappy. "And be sure to call me if there's anything I can do to help."

Tony knew he was being even more difficult to everyone than usual. Considering how difficult he normally was, that probably made him pretty much impossible, but it was unavoidable. Things would turn into a complete mess unless they found Pepper soon. There was no way he was going to keep up his scheduled meetings as long as she was missing - it was a fact that he completely sucked at that sort of stuff. Then again, right now, he couldn't have cared less about company affairs. There was only room for one thing in his mind: he would never, ever forgive himself if anything bad had happened to Pepper.

  


* * *

  


The first thing House noticed once he woke up was that he was in a plane. He didn't even need to open his eyes to figure it out. There were plenty of little signs: the way his ears felt, the slight vibration of the floor, the familiar sounds. A plane. That ruled out both ex-patients and over-eager cops, leaving - what? Government organizations or terrorists? Why would either of those want to kidnap him? Unless...

House opened his eyes and got instant confirmation for his guess. Right in front of him, lying on the metallic floor, apparently unconscious, was Tony Stark's secretary. Miss Potter, or Pitt, or something like that - he hadn't bothered to learn the name.

The kidnappers, whoever they were, hadn't been after Gregory House, M.D., Head of the Department of Diagnostic Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. They had wanted Gregory House, M.D., the medical advisor of Iron Man. Kind of cool, but at the moment, House wasn't sure he could appreciate it.

Looking at the surroundings, he could be one-hundred-percent certain that he and Miss P-whatever were in an airplane. The curve of the ceiling was a dead giveaway. Then again, the rest of the room didn't quite add up. It was a small compartment, maybe ten feet across, between two metal walls intersecting the hull of the plane. There was a door in the wall in front of him, but it would be locked, there was no doubt about that.

He sat up. It seemed unlikely that the inhalational stuff they'd knocked him out with could've kept him unconscious for long. He rolled up his sleeves, and sure enough, there was a barely noticeable needle mark in his left arm. He grimaced. Well, at least whatever they had given him didn't seem to come with any significant after-effects, nothing but a mild headache and slight nausea.

Considering how sore he felt, he had probably been out for a good while. He didn't have his watch anymore. As he checked his pockets, he found out that he didn't have anything else, either. They had taken everything but his clothes. Everything, including his Vicodin. Damn. His thigh twinged at the very thought. Now that he considered it, maybe the headache and nausea had nothing to do with the mysterious knockout gas or the unknown IV sedative, after all.

He stood up leaning on the nearest wall, and made his way to the door. No surprise there: it was locked. He banged on it and shouted "Hey! Bad guys! You'll be in so much trouble for this!" but there was no answer.

He sat down again and waited, staring at the unconscious assistant girl. Her short skirt made her legs look unnaturally long. She was quite pretty, with her red hair and freckles - cute and unusual. House could see why Stark was so smitten with her.

Nothing happened. His thigh ached. He was bored.

Finally, he just couldn't ignore her continuing unconsciousness any longer. Kidnapped or not, House never got away from patients. Sighing in resignation, he moved closer to check her vitals. Nothing interesting there.

"Hey, you! Wake up!" he called out, but she slept on.

He grabbed her shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze.

The effect was instantaneous: she screamed "Heeelp!" in an absolutely ear-splitting voice, her arms flailing wildly. Before House could get out of the way, her hand collided with his face.

He fell back, holding his stinging cheek. "Nice reflexes," he noted. "Next time, hit me a bit harder and it might make me forget about my leg."

She looked all awake and more-or-less alert now. She sat up and stared at him with huge bewildered eyes, like the proverbial deer. It wasn't the only deer-like thing about her, either, since there was also the way she sat on her long legs, which were crossed beneath her in a pretty uncomfortable-looking position - like Bambi on ice.

"House?" she said, sounding as stupefied as she looked. "What's going on? Where am I?"

"Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing. I figured you'd be a real expert on kidnappings. You're Iron Man's girlfriend, after all. This sort of stuff must happen to you all the time."

  


* * *

  


The first thing Kutner, Taub and Thirteen noticed when they arrived at House's place was that his car was parked right in front of the door. It made it seem likely that he was at home. At least he hadn't gotten into a car crash or anything like that. They stepped into the hallway, a small space with doors to two apartments and a set of mailboxes.

"House? House! Are you in there?" Kutner yelled, knocking hard on House's front door.

There was no answer, not even an angry "go away".

"House! Open the door or we'll break in," Taub tried. Still nothing.

"Maybe he's fast asleep, or unconscious," Thirteen said.

"Maybe he's just ignoring us because he doesn't believe we'd really break in," Kutner suggested.

"Hah! He knows we're ready to do anything, that's why he hired us in the first place," Taub said. He measured the door with his gaze, looking thoughtful. "All right, who's going to actually do this?"

"I am," Thirteen answered, jingling a set of keys in front of his nose. "I borrowed them from Wilson." She put the key in the lock and shouted, "House, you better put some clothes on, we're coming in."

She opened the door to reveal a silent, empty living room.

"House? House!" Kutner called out.

He took a few steps into the room and looked around. The place was actually less messy than he would've expected, and the furniture was pretty expensive-looking. On the other hand, the collections of books, CDs and medical publications were exactly like he had imagined, as was the small grand piano, which had an empty bottle of whiskey sitting on top of it.

"His cane isn't here," Taub noted. "So, either he never got back from the bar, or if he did, he's left again."

"Since his car was right there, and Wilson said he was driving last Saturday, it seems he did return," Thirteen said. "He came back, and now he's gone somewhere, by bus or cab."

"Or maybe he took his bike," Taub suggested. "He's got one, right?"

"Yeah. But I think we'd better check out the place anyway, now that we're here. Maybe we'll find some clues," Kutner said.

They made a quick round through all the rooms. There was no sign of anything unusual. The bed wasn't made, the sheets were tangled, but of course, that didn't have to mean that House had slept there last night - it just meant that he hadn't bothered to make his bed whenever he'd gotten up the last time. The same went for the mess in the kitchen. It could've been from this morning, or from yesterday, or the day before.

This was a lot harder than what they normally did. When they went to a patient's place, they usually had some idea of what they were looking for. If they suspected a poisoning, they'd look for poisonous substances that could explain the symptoms. An infection? They'd look for the possible source. But a mysteriously missing House?

They came out empty-handed, and returned to the hallway.

"I don't get it," Thirteen said, frowning. "Why hasn't he told anyone where he's gone, and why isn't he answering his phone? It's like he's just decided to disappear!"

"Maybe he was kidnapped," Kutner said.

The two others stared at him like he had gone nuts.

"Why would anyone want to kidnap him?" Thirteen asked.

"No one in their right minds would," Taub said. "He'd drive them crazy!"

"Maybe it has something to do with Iron Man."

"Come on, Kutner, you don't really believe that stuff about House being Stark's advisor, do you?" Taub asked.

"Why not? It's entirely possible! Anyway, shouldn't we call the police?" Kutner said, his fingers already gripping the cell phone in his pocket.

Taub still looked extremely skeptical. "Call Cuddy, she can decide what to do. Let's get back to the hospital."

They left the building. Thirteen produced a set of car keys, and went to check House's car, while Kutner dialed Cuddy and told her about what they had, or rather, hadn't found.

Without warning, Thirteen leaped away from the car and turned to face Kutner and Taub. "I found something!" she exclaimed, a piece of paper in her hand and a look of shock and disbelief on her face.

"Sorry, wait a second, something's come up," Kutner said on the phone, and lifted it off his ear. "What's that?"

"You were right. He was kidnapped," she declared.

She offered the note to Taub and Kutner. Kutner grabbed it and turned it around in his hand. It was a standard grocery store receipt. On the backside, there were a few hastily scribbled words in the familiar handwriting they saw on the whiteboard every day.
    
    
    If you find this and I'm not around,
    I've either been kidnapped,
    or I've lost my mind.
    Quit staring and do something.
    -House

  


* * *

  


"I figured you'd be a real expert on kidnappings. You're Iron Man's girlfriend, after all. This sort of stuff must happen to you all the time."

"I'm not his girlfriend!" Pepper protested, just a tad too quickly. She was sure it'd be more than enough to tell House how she actually felt.

"The tabloids say differently."

"The tabloids have been speculating about us for years," she said, doing her best to sound casual.

"Whatever happened to 'Oh sweet darling Tony, you're like an arc reactor to me'?"

"How can you..." Pepper felt face flush. How could House possibly know about that? She'd said it to Tony in the hospital, when he had been lying on what might've ended up being his deathbed. There had been no one in the room but the two of them. Then again, if she remembered correctly, House had left just before they'd had that conversation. "You were eavesdropping on us?!"

"He was a patient, it could've been medically relevant. Anyway, does this mean that you have no idea of why we're here, wherever here is?"

She couldn't believe it. How could he! She wanted to hit him again, wanted to scream and shout at him for being such a total jerk, but she knew that wouldn't get them anywhere - House was so inconsiderate that nothing she could say would make him regret what he'd done. He was probably right to change the subject. They had both been kidnapped, they were both stuck in this small metal-walled compartment in a plane headed who knew where, and there were more important matters at hand than something that had been said or done a month ago.

She settled for giving him the iciest glance she could manage, and answered, "No, I don't. Three thugs appeared from out of nowhere and grabbed me, just like that."

"They had probably been stalking you for days and you just failed to notice."

Was that possible? She didn't think she could've been so blind. She had had her share of trouble with paparazzi and the like, after all, and she hadn't noticed anything out of the usual lately. "You think they stalked you?"

"I know they did, and they were damn good at it, probably professionals. You sure you don't have any idea of who they were?"

She shook her head. "It was dark and they were hooded. Tony's made a lot of enemies since he became Iron Man, there's no telling who sent them, or why."

"'Why' is an easy question to answer. Either to get information from us, or to use us as bait to get to him. I'm betting on the first one, because I'm here. He wouldn't risk a single hair from his ridiculous goatee to save me, but I do know a thing or two about his suit, thanks to being his personal physician. You know we tried to keep it a low profile job - I had no intention of painting a target on myself - but seems we weren't careful enough."

"I always knew that something like this could happen, but now that it's happened..." she shook her head. "I can't believe we're really here. This feels too much like a bad dream."

"I often have that effect on people."

"Oh, that's why you avoid seeing patients?"

"Yes, it's all for their own good. I'm really full of compassion and love, it's just that no one understands me."

Despite the gloomy circumstances, Pepper smirked at that one. "You're almost as bad as Tony."

"Ouch! 'Almost as bad?' That's insulting!"

"I'm amazed the two of you haven't ended up strangling each other yet."

"That's because we haven't actually met face-to-face since the two of you left the hospital. I'm pretty sure he's kept our relationship a long-distance one because he knows otherwise he'd end up testing his latest über-death-rays on me."

"Of course. All for your own good. As we both know, he's full of compassion and love, too."

"We're genuine hippies, Anthony and I. Flower power, peace and love. Except when someone takes away my Vicodin. That's when I become a complete monster. Which is about now," House said, his hand on his thigh.

Pepper wasn't sure what to say to that. She had actually noticed the slight but constant frown on House's face, the lines of pain on his forehead. The thugs had taken everything she'd had on her, so naturally they had taken everything he'd had, too. She didn't know the exact story behind his cane and limp, but she did know he was on continuous pain medication because of it.

"Are you -"

"No, I'm not all right, and not going to be, either," House answered the question before Pepper had time to finish it. "My leg's killing me, and unless I magically manage to get my hands on some hydrocodone soon, I'll start going through a nice set of withdrawal symptoms on top of that. I can promise it won't be pretty."


	3. "I need to do something!"

Tony had just landed on the roof of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s California headquarters - a remarkably unremarkable building, the rooftop helipad about the only detail that was even remotely interesting - when he got the day's second phone call. It came from Rhodey. Again, Tony answered with a "What?" in his most annoyed tone.

"Happy called me, I was just wondering if I -"

"The best thing you could do right now would be to leave me alone. I'm taking this to S.H.I.E.L.D., they've got better resources for this sort of stuff than I do."

"Not that I want to depress you or anything, but I'm not sure they'll be that eager to help. As far as we know, this could be just a regular missing person case."

"They're going to take the case," Tony said grimly. He didn't see the need to argue that further.

"All right, fine, if you say so. I sure wouldn't want to be in their shoes right now. But hey, Tony, really, if there's anything..."

"Yeah, yeah." Tony hung up.

Rhodey's prediction turned out entirely accurate. Tony marched into Coulson's office, and the first thing the agent said was that he should contact the regular police. Putting to use all his skill and his considerable force of personality, Tony argued that he couldn't do that, because this was a superhero problem, and as such, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s problem.

Coulson replied like a true politician, going around in circles, neither promising nor denying anything. He knew Pepper, and Tony could see that he wanted to help, but all his professional instincts were against it. He wanted Tony to turn to all other possible alternatives first, even though it was a fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. had better resources than anyone else in the country, partially thanks to Tony himself.

He wasn't going to waste his - and more importantly Pepper's - time in such totally useless, pointless bullshit. He grabbed Coulson by the shirtfront, lifted him in the air and put him literally up against the wall. "I've done so much to help S.H.I.E.L.D. already, it's about time you did something for me! I'm not going to listen to this crap. You will do anything in your power to find her, and that's it. Otherwise, our cooperation's over, for good."

The damn thing about these S.H.I.E.L.D. agents was that they were incredibly difficult to intimidate. Even pinned to the wall, faced with Iron Man in all his menacing red-and-gold glory, Coulson looked only slightly uncomfortable. He gave Tony an emotionless half-smile, and said, "Yes, I'll do what I can. Believe me, I want to find her as bad as you do. It's just not that easy."

Tony felt like he was seconds away from going berserk and blasting holes in the wall. If he were the Hulk, he'd have turned huge and green already. He dropped Coulson on the floor, gently enough that the agent was able to stay on his feet. Then, he ignited his thrusters and shot out through the nearest window.

He pushed the suit as high as it would go, and stayed up there, just floating around, staring at the dream-like skyscape around him, trying to calm down enough that he'd be able to come up with some kind of a plan of action. Finally, he called Rhodey and asked him to pull any and all possible strings, to claim that this was a threat to national security or whatever, to get them to search for Pepper too. Then he called Happy, and asked him to go to Pepper's place, and start interviewing the neighborhood to find out if they'd noticed anything out of the usual.

Tony headed to Pepper's place as well, and got there before Happy. No matter how carefully he scanned the surroundings, he found absolutely nothing unusual. Pepper's car was parked in the driveway, her front gate was closed, and the house seemed empty. As much as Tony wanted to blast his way through the front door and start searching the house for clues, he decided against it. It'd rid the S.H.I.E.L.D. people of any chance of finding clues.

Unable to think of anything he could actually do, Tony returned home and got out of the suit. He was surprised to learn that it was only early afternoon. He desperately wanted to do something useful. Just sitting and waiting would drive him nuts in no time. He felt like calling through all possible contacts to ask for their help, but he knew it wouldn't be wise, since he wanted to keep this from going public.

He tried to concentrate on the suits. He had a few new ideas for his own, and Rhodey's armor - silver-and-black, with the working title of War Machine - could still use some fine tuning. But concentrating was difficult for more than one reason. He kept being interrupted by phone calls. It was no longer his friends calling about Pepper, but some of the people he'd been supposed to meet, complaining about the abrupt cancellations with no mention of rescheduling. He ignored half the calls, and when he did answer, he needed a huge amount of self-restraint not to make things worse by insulting the callers or just plain hanging up on them in the middle of things. He wished he could've just turned off his phone, but he couldn't do that, because sooner or later, someone would have to call with news about Pepper.

The day went on, but there were no news. He stayed in his shop until midnight, when Jarvis started complaining that he should get some sleep. Tired of the AI's nagging, Tony took the Roadster out for a ride.

Once he got back a few hours and at least a dozen moving violations later, he told Jarvis to shut up and continued working. Still no calls about Pepper.

He must've fallen asleep at some point, because for the second time in as many days, he woke up in his shop. This time, he was lying on the cold floor, feeling so sore that it was almost as if he'd just returned from a mission. He definitely needed a shower, and he couldn't even remember when he'd last had anything to eat.

Pepper had gone missing on Saturday evening, and Jarvis informed Tony that it was Tuesday now. She'd been gone for two whole days, and he was a complete wreck. If his friends had felt like this when he'd been stuck in Afghanistan, he couldn't even begin to understand how they were still sane.

The day's first phone call came just after he'd woken up, at 7AM - and from an entirely unexpected direction.

"Mr. Stark? This is Lisa Cuddy, from Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. I heard the news about your assistant's disappearance. This may be far-fetched and completely unrelated, but I just thought you might be interested: House is missing as well."

  


* * *

  


House would rather have been stuck with Stark himself than with the man's assistant. Her constant concerned stare was incredibly annoying. There was nothing she could do to help him, and being worried wouldn't change that. Besides, House knew she didn't even like him. It was hypocritical of her to try and seem so anxious, when she really didn't feel that way.

He was almost glad he didn't have a watch. The flight was obviously a long one, hours and hours - intercontinental, by the feel of it. The waiting wasn't made any easier by the mild but constant nausea and the slowly worsening pain in his leg.

They quickly ran out of anything to say, and ended up just sitting on the floor, staring at the walls, or each other, like she did almost all the time.

When the background hum finally changed and the floor tilted, clearly signaling that they were about to land, House actually felt relieved, even though he knew that they were most likely going out of the frying pan into the blazing inferno.

Not long after they had touched down, the door opened, and a group of thugs in generic black uniforms came to take House and the girl out of their prison. Since House had trouble walking on his own, two of them grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and half-dragged him across the floor.

"If you idiots gave me back my meds and my cane, you'd save yourself a lot of trouble," House groaned to his captors. They could've been mute and deaf for all the attention he got.

The cronies no longer wore hoods, but seeing their faces told House absolutely nothing. They were a mixed bunch - House thought he could see at least European, Asian and Middle-Eastern features. No clues from languages, either, since they weren't speaking.

House was too busy struggling to stay on his feet to get a very good idea of what the rest of the plane looked like. There was a bigger room which was stocked with crates, then a smaller room with a hatch and a set of stairs leading out. There was a van waiting for them right at the foot of the stairs. The cronies threw House and the secretary girl in there, and slammed the door shut. So much for figuring out where they were - all House had seen was the landing strip. At least the bright sunlight coming from right above them had revealed the time of the day: around noon.

Then, they were moving and waiting again, now in an even smaller space that was completely dark.

"I never knew getting kidnapped would be this boring," House said.

"You can't even walk because your leg hurts so much and you call that boring?"

"Pain doesn't make things interesting. It just makes them painful."

"I wish there was something I..."

"Oh shut up, you don't really mean that."

She was smart enough to actually stay silent and let House suffer in peace.

The ride grew bumpier as it progressed, but at least the trip was mercifully short compared to the endless stay in the plane. House knew his sense of time was completely off thanks to jet lag, but he was prepared to bet it took less than an hour. Then, they were taken out of the van.

They found themselves in a huge, hall-like garage - House could see several military-style trucks and jeeps. Again, the as-good-as mute guards grabbed House and hauled him forwards, with the assistant girl walking in front of them, two cronies close by her sides. They were led through a series of corridors, stone-walled tunnels excavated into rock, some of them lined with metal, and they even went several stories up in an elevator.

Finally, they reached the end of their very long road. The cronies pushed House and Miss P. into a small room, and closed the thick steel door behind them. He fell heavily on one of the two bunks, curling up and grasping his thigh. He couldn't remember when it'd last felt this bad.

"The hotel's really nice and the natives seem friendly, but I think I'd like to go home now," he muttered.

  


* * *

  


The headline read "Iron Mystery? Stark's Secretary Missing". The page-long article included comments from an unnamed worker at Los Angeles International Airport, and from some of the secretary's neighbors, who claimed that someone working for Stark had interviewed them about the case. There was also a list of several sightings of Iron Man during the previous day. From these clues, the author had come to the conclusion that Miss Potts had disappeared and Stark was looking for her.

"It's quite a coincidence if this is unrelated," Wilson told Cuddy, looking up from the newspaper she had given him. "We know that House was doing some work for Stark, after all."

"That's what Stark thought, too," Cuddy said. "I've already called him, and he's on his way. He should arrive at around two."

"Thanks for letting me know," Wilson said, and folded up the paper.

Cuddy left his office, and Wilson had to get to work, as hard as it was to concentrate at the moment. He'd been worried to begin with, afraid that House had done something stupid, or gotten into an accident, but this raised things to a whole new level. If House had really been captured by Stark's enemies, who knew what sort of trouble he was in. Sure, House was resourceful, and no doubt would annoy his captors out of their wits, but he was no superhero.

It wasn't exactly a good thing to have a constant worried expression on one's face when one needed to give people life-and-death news. "I'm happy to tell you the operation was a success" somehow had a little less weight when it was said in a clearly distracted manner, and "I'm afraid the mass was malignant" sounded even more like a death sentence than it should.

Wilson ended up rescheduling the last few hours of his day. He didn't like doing it, but he saw no other way. At quarter to two, he walked to Cuddy's office, to find that Stark was already there - or not exactly Stark, but Iron Man, in full armor, although he had the faceplate open. He was accompanied by a man Wilson had never seen, a blond youngster with round glasses, wearing a suit and a bow tie.

"I don't think you've met? Mr. Stark, this is Doctor Wilson, a close friend of Doctor House. Wilson, Mr. Stark," Cuddy made the introductions routinely, as unnecessary as they were when it came to Iron Man. Then, she nodded at the young man. "And this is special agent Sitwell, of..."

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division," Sitwell recited. "Pleased to meet you, Doctor Wilson," he said, and shook Wilson's hand energetically. "From now on, I'll be in charge of the investigation concerning Doctor House's disappearance."

"But we already called the police and reported him missing," Wilson said.

"Ah, you did? We'll, that won't be a problem, we'll contact them and find out what they've already done," Sitwell told him, with a somewhat nervous sideways glance at Iron Man.

"So, what've you got?" Stark asked, looking from Cuddy to Wilson.

"Not much, I'm afraid," Cuddy said.

"The last time anyone saw House was when I was out with him last Saturday night. He gave me a ride home, and after that, no one knows. His car was parked in front of his place, so it seems he got back there at some point. He left a note in his car, saying that he may have been kidnapped," Wilson explained.

"Well, where is it?" Stark said, as if expecting that someone would hand the note to him right away.

"We gave it to the police, of course," Wilson said.

"Oh, great. Maybe you should've -"

"It's all right, Mr. Stark, we can get it from them," Sitwell said quickly. "Look, there really isn't much you can do here - no offense, sir, but this is a detective mission, and you're not exactly the best choice for something that calls for subtlety."

"Damn it, I need to do something!" Stark exclaimed.

Wilson could imagine Stark felt exactly like he did at the moment. Looking at the lines of worry on Stark's face and the bags under his eyes that spoke clearly of too little sleep, Wilson felt like he was facing a mirror.

Stark flipped down his faceplate and stormed out of the room.

"Um... I..." Sitwell stuttered, looking after him. "I'm sorry. Superheroes, you know. They tend to be a bit temperamental."

"Don't worry, Mr. Sitwell. I understand perfectly," Wilson said.

  


* * *

  


Their cell wasn't actually as bad as Pepper might've expected - it was almost comfortable. They had two bunks with thin mattresses, enough space that she could pace to and fro, and a sink and a hole-in-the-floor toilet in a niche in the back wall, with a plastic curtain for privacy. Of course, there was also a surveillance camera in the ceiling.

House was currently crouched over the toilet, throwing up.

Pepper paced on, her arms crossed. House was outright refusing any help. On the one hand, he kept downplaying his problems, on the other, he complained a lot. Of course, the truth was that there was nothing she could actually do for him, but it still made her angry that he claimed her compassion was phony. Sure, she didn't exactly like him, but she couldn't watch anyone suffer like that without feeling some sympathy.

Suddenly, the door was flung wide open. Pepper froze.

Three men entered the room, two of them obviously the bodyguards of the third one. He was a short, bald man with mixed features, maybe half-Asian, half-European. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, against which the heavy golden ring in his right middle finger stood out clearly.

"Sorry, could you wait a while, I'm not done here yet," House mumbled from where he was, his back towards the door.

"Ah, Doctor House. Enchanté. And Miss Potts. Welcome to my humble home. My name is Liu," the bald bad guy said, his voice pleasant, with a refined British accent. He reached out a hand to take Pepper's, but she didn't give it to him. "No need to be afraid, I'm not going to harm you. I have no need to."

"Fine, then you can give me back my meds, because you're already harming me," House said, now facing the cronies. He was sitting on the floor, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I'm afraid we don't have them, but don't worry, unless you choose to cooperate, a painful leg will soon be the least of your problems."

"Torture us all you want, we won't tell you anything!" Pepper exclaimed. She thought she sounded far braver than she felt. She knew what Tony had gone through in Afghanistan, and she had no idea whether she'd be able to take anything like it.

"Torture you? Oh, no, that would be cruel. No, we'll do no such thing. We're simply going to wait and see. I believe you are familiar with a certain nanovirus? Based on a Brazilian strain of hantavirus? You were both infected, soon after you were captured."

Pepper shivered, pressing her crossed arms tightly against her sides. The nanovirus. Out of all the things the bad guys could've done to them.

"Don't be stupid," House said bluntly, sounding unconcerned. "All your cronies would have it too by now, and so would you."

"Believe me, Doctor House, I'm far from stupid. You see, this is an all-new version - two-point-zero, if you wish. It isn't transmissible from person to person, and is faster-acting. It's also far more deadly than the first one. Stark may have managed to survive the previous strain, even though it was supposed to be lethal in seventy-five percent of cases, but you won't be so lucky. My researchers assure me that this latest strain has a mortality of ninety-five percent. However, there is a cure that will save you. All you need to do is tell us everything you know about Iron Man. Otherwise, within a few days, you will die."


	4. "That is how it begins"

Goddamnit.

Tony had flown all the way from California to New Jersey, met up with Sitwell, and spent maybe half an hour talking to him and the people at Princeton-Plainsboro. Now he was flying homewards, feeling frustrated beyond words. He'd flown two and a half thousand miles there and back again, for a few short conversations that he could just as well have handled over the phone. Talk about impulsive behavior.

He so needed to pull himself together. If only he had the slightest idea of how to do it. They hadn't just taken Pepper, they had also taken House. Tony would never call House his friend, but he did admit that House was very intelligent and good at what he did - and he actually knew some facts which might potentially be used to harm Tony. Not that he cared the least bit about himself right now. The bastards had taken Pepper. And House. They would pay for it. Sooner or later, Tony would find them, and they'd be in so much trouble - except that it wasn't Tony who was going to find them, since no matter how he tried, now that he'd gotten the search underway, there didn't seem to be much of anything he could do himself.

He considered dropping by at the S.H.I.E.L.D. office in L.A., or going to Pepper's place again, but he knew that neither would do any good. Back to the mansion it was, then.

To his surprise, he found Rhodey there, waiting for him in his shop. He was holding one of the silvery War Machine gauntlets, turning it around and looking at it curiously. He quickly set it on the table as Tony landed.

"Hey, Iron Man! How was the East Coast?"

"Eastern. What're you doing here?"

"I figured you could use the company."

Tony took off his helmet and set it on the nearest table. "Yeah, I guess you might be right. I could use some pizza, too, and a beer."

"What do you know - I just happened to bring some."

"Wow, you're being nice... Wait - yeah, right, I get it. You're trying to bribe me because you want to do another test run."

"I definitely wouldn't mind that, but no, actually I'm bringing you food because Jarvis told me you've been living on candy bars, coffee and whisky for over a day now."

"Jarvis!" Tony groaned. "I'm going to re-program you as a telephone answering machine for this."

"Very well, sir. It'll come in handy once you pass out from excessive alcohol consumption combined with lack of food and sleep, and need me to take all your phone calls."

"You've got one very smart AI there," Rhodey said, grinning. "Get out of that suit, the pizza's getting cold."

Even though Tony was unwilling to admit it, Rhodey really was a lifesaver, and if his being here was thanks to Jarvis, then Jarvis deserved some credit, too. He'd had no idea of how hungry he was. Seemed like there really had been a point to all the snarking Pepper had done about Tony not being able to manage ordinary life without her. Then again, this wasn't a normal situation. Tony was a grown-up, it wasn't like he'd just waste away if there was no one around to feed him. That was a stupid thing for anyone to claim.

Two pizzas and several beers later Tony and Rhodey returned to the shop to take a look at Rhodey's armor. It wasn't as if Tony had anything better to do, and this would be a great way to pass the time and keep his mind off everything else. They spent the rest of the afternoon, and the evening, and a good part of the night working on it, first just fitting and adjusting in the shop, then doing a test run in the dark night sky, both of them wearing their suits.

The War Machine armor was performing perfectly - of course it was, since Tony had designed it. He still wasn't entirely sure about the design, though. It was even more weapon-like than the Iron Man armor, which was an idea that made him slightly uncomfortable. Then again, Rhodey was military. Weapons were a part of his job, no matter what. Tony also liked it that the suits were slightly different, with different strengths and weaknesses. They would complement each other well in battles.

At night, after Rhodey had left, Tony actually made it to his bed for a change - and lay awake for hours, thinking about the fact that he still hadn't gotten one single phone call with news about Pepper, or House, for that matter. Finally, he drifted into restless sleep.

  


* * *

  


"Well, Doctor House, what do you say? I have heard you're brilliant at your work, so you must know exactly what to expect from the virus. You don't have to go through it."

Oh yeah, House knew a thing or two about their nanotech-enhanced hantavirus. If they really had it, and if this new strain was anything like the previous one, it would cause a disease very similar to hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome. After a period of unremarkable flu-like symptoms, his lungs would begin to fill with fluid, and he'd slowly suffocate to death. Not the nicest possible way to go.

He could lie to Liu, tell him that he had information, but feed him complete fiction. House was a very good liar. He didn't doubt for one second that he wouldn't be able to convince them. But he'd only save himself if he did that, Stark's assistant - Potts - would still be in trouble, and they'd still both be stuck here. He might avoid certain death, but there was no way Liu would just cut him loose once he'd given him all the data he had. Also, House had his pride. He was a superhero's sidekick caught by the hero's enemies, after all. Giving in when the enemies first asked him to, even though it'd only be a ruse, would still feel like treachery.

"At least it'll put an end to my withdrawal," he answered Liu. "Can I please go back to my nice, quiet cell now?"

"Ah, you disappoint me. I'd have expected a man of your intelligence to make the right choice. Well, I'll ask you again later. Perhaps you will change your mind."

Liu's cronies picked House up from the surprisingly comfortable arm chair where he'd sat through this little interrogation. The whole scene had been somewhat different form what he had expected. The room was decorated with oriental carpets and vases, and Liu sat behind a tasteless mahogany desk, looking like an executive of some well-to-do business, or like a classic James Bond villain. If House hadn't been feeling so awful, he might've found the situation extremely amusing.

The thugs dragged him through the corridors, back to the bleak little cell. Potts was once again pacing to and fro, barefoot, since she'd finally taken off her heels.

"Well, what did you say to them?" she asked as soon as he was lying on his bunk again.

"I promised them my firstborn child, my grandmother's ashes, and all of Iron Man's secrets."

"You said no."

"Of course I did. What did you expect?"

"That you'd try to talk your way out of this, lie, cheat, whatever. It's what you're good at, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure it'd do us much good right now," House said, his eyes closed.

"And maybe it's better that you didn't, it would just complicate things. Tony's going to get us out of here. He'll find us and he'll break us out."

"He'd better, because otherwise, I'm handing him my resignation."

Again, they had nothing to do but wait. Being kidnapped really was incredibly boring. They still had no means to keep track of time. They were brought food, a noodle soup of some sort, which might have been good if he had been able to eat. At a seemingly random hour, the lights in their room went off. At least Potts stopped pacing, then, and settled down in her bunk.

To his surprise, House actually fell asleep at some point. He woke up again when the lights came on, in a sad imitation of a sunrise.

Then, they waited, and waited, and nothing happened.

They were taken to see Liu again, one at a time, just like the previous day, and they both said no. They were brought food twice. The first time, House actually managed to eat some - the second time, the smell of it was enough to make him so nauseous that he lost what he'd eaten earlier.

All in all, the only difference between the two days was that during the second day, House felt even worse. He was chilled but drenched in sweat, and the pain wasn't just in his leg, his entire body was achy by now. If he hadn't gone through this before, he might have thought he was dying, just completely falling apart. As it was, he knew he wasn't, but that didn't make him feel any better.

Finally, the lights went off again, signaling the end of their second day in their cell. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep, and he was pretty sure Potts wouldn't, either, thanks to his constant shifting, gasping and groaning. On some level, he was glad they hadn't got any tools at hand, since he'd have leaped at the chance to inflict himself enough harm to take his mind off everything else. He considered just driving his fist into the wall as hard as he could, but that would've required moving, which he wasn't up to at the moment.

At some point during the night, she appeared by his bedside, and began dabbing at his forehead with a wet cloth. Since they had no extra pieces of cloth with them, it was most likely her sleeve. He didn't push her away. It didn't exactly make him feel better, but a tiny bit of relief was better than nothing at all.

Somehow, he actually managed to fall asleep. In the morning, he woke up with Potts dozing by his side, sitting on the floor, her head on his mattress.

So, maybe he had been wrong about her compassion not being genuine.

House was pretty sure that the worst of the withdrawal was finally over, but that meant that it wouldn't be long before the first symptoms of the nanovirus would start showing up. No matter how bad he felt at the moment, he figured he'd rather keep the withdrawal.

  


* * *

  


Rhodey almost felt like he should've stayed at the Stark Mansion overnight. There were guest rooms, it wouldn't have been the first time - but he knew there was a limit to how much babysitting Tony would accept. The fact that he had actually admitted he needed company was a small victory in itself.

The next morning, Rhodey wondered whether he should just call Tony right away, or wait and see what would happen. He decided to wait. Better not overdo the concerned friend thing - a quarrel between him and Tony was the last thing they needed in this situation.

He checked with his military contacts who he'd asked for help on the case, but just like before, all they did was shake their heads and throw up their hands. They didn't have anything, because they couldn't do anything. This really wasn't their case. Tony had made this S.H.I.E.L.D. business, which effectively shut out everyone else. They'd either need to coordinate their actions with S.H.I.E.L.D. - which would be useless, since S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't need their help - or risk stepping on some very big toes. Rhodey told them "Thank you anyway", and put away the phone.

He couldn't help thinking back to the days when it'd been Tony who had been missing. The fact that Rhodey had already gone through something like this didn't make it any easier. The memories were as clear as yesterday, and it had been just the same. The first days had been filled with frantic action, setting the search in motion, pulling all possible strings to get as many men on the case as he could. They were starting to be past that phase already.

When there had been no results, it'd become harder and harder to keep the searches going, to convince people that there was any point in searching at all. Slowly, almost everyone had started to get used to the state of things, started to believe that Tony wasn't coming back. Rhodey and Pepper had been among the last to still believe that he wasn't dead, and even that had been part denial. Rhodey wondered how long it'd take before people started feeling that there was no point in looking for Pepper anymore.

His cell phone startled him out of his introspection. He was half-expecting it to be Tony, but it wasn't. Instead, the caller ID revealed it was a certain S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Rhodey hadn't thought he'd ever need to talk to again.

"Sitwell?"

"Hello, Colonel Rhodes. Have you been in contact with Mr. Stark lately?"

"Well, yeah, I was with him until midnight last night, why?"

"Last night, but not today? He's not answering his phone."

"He's not?" Rhodey felt an instant pang of worry, although it was likely that Tony was just ignoring his phone or sleeping like a log.

"I've tried it several times. The thing is, I've finally got news about the missing people. We have a possible location. It's in the Qilian mountains, in China."

"China?" Rhodey repeated, not sure whether that made any sense. "Anyway, that's great news! Look, I really need to check if Tony's all right, but I'll call you back asap."

Tony didn't answer Rhodey's calls, so he drove to the mansion. Jarvis greeted him at the door. "Colonel Rhodes. I'm glad you're here. Something has come up, and Mr. Stark is quite distressed."

He found Tony in the living room, sitting on the couch, staring at a blank TV screen, looking like he was ready to strangle the first person to come within reach.

Rhodey knocked on a wall to announce his presence. "Tony?" he asked cautiously.

Tony jumped, clearly startled, and turned his head to face Rhodey. His expression was so torn that Rhodey had never seen anything quite like it. "Rhodey - I... They..." Tony grimaced and shook his head. "You need to see this for yourself. Jarvis, replay."

The screen came to life with a picture showing a small, stone-walled room with two people: Pepper and House. She was standing next to a small bunk, her arms crossed, her expression anxious. House sat on the floor, looking pale and in pain. Rhodey could also see the shadows of a few other people, who were out of the camera's view.

"Torture us all you want, we won't tell you anything!" Pepper said, sounding rebellious and entirely fearless. Rhodey had always known she was strong of character, but he was impressed nevertheless.

"Torture you? Oh, no, that would be cruel," one of the out-of-sight people said in a smooth, dangerous voice. "No, we'll do no such thing. We're simply going to wait and see. I believe you are familiar with a certain nanovirus? Based on a Brazilian strain of hantavirus? You were both infected, soon after you were captured."

"That's enough, Jarvis," Tony said, sounding choked.

"Oh, man..."

"Yeah. It came in this morning. There it was, in my inbox, just like that, with a message saying that if I don't want them to suffer and die, I can show up at the international airport in New Delhi, within two days, alone, without my armor or any weapons. Turn myself in, in exchange for their lives."

  


* * *

  


On the morning of the third day of their captivity, Pepper woke up sitting on the cold stone floor, her head in the crook of her arm, which rested on House's bunk. She stretched, feeling sore all over from sleeping in such an uncomfortable position. She didn't even remember falling asleep. She did remember him falling asleep though, which had been a huge relief to them both.

House was awake already, and he was staring at her, a crooked grin on his face. "You'll need to be careful, Potts, or Stark will get jealous of me. Just wait until I tell him you've been giving me sponge baths..."

"First of all, that wasn't a sponge bath, and secondly, if we get out of here alive, I doubt Tony's going to care about the details. So, am I over-interpreting, or are you actually feeling better?"

"Aside from a splitting headache and a thigh that feels like it's got a Rottweiler hanging from it by his teeth, yeah, I'm great."

"Glad to hear that," she said, hoping it sounded every bit as genuine as it was.

Even though they hadn't talked a whole lot during the two days they'd spent here, not least because House had been so sick most of the time, Pepper already felt like they'd known each other for years. Like old acquaintances who weren't exactly friends, but nevertheless shared so much that it couldn't be ignored. Two very different people brought together by life-changing circumstances. On top of that, she felt like she'd known House for years because at times, he reminded her of Tony. She was so used to exchanges that were nothing but wit and quips and bad puns that talking to House often felt so familiar it made her miss Tony horribly.

How she missed him - and how silly it now felt that she'd been avoiding any serious conversations with him, that she hadn't really talked with him about the way she felt. Why on Earth wouldn't she want a relationship with him? Wouldn't a continuous roller coaster ride of worry and relief be a better choice than giving him the cold shoulder and trying to repress whatever she felt? On the other hand, wasn't it a rather bad sign that it seemed to take a life-and-death situation before she could actually admit to herself how much she loved him?

As ridiculous as it was, she was worried for Tony. He would blame himself for this, and drive himself over the edge trying to figure out what had happened to her. She knew what he was like when he had his mind set on something: obsessive to the point of forgetting everything else. At least he had Rhodey and Happy around to keep him sane, and to make sure he slept and ate.

She and House had the day's first meal, and a few hours after that, exactly like on the previous days, the thugs came to take her to see Liu.

Pepper had heard Liu's name before. One of the scientists who had been involved in the previous nanovirus nightmare had mentioned it to Tony, and he had told her. Liu had supposedly been responsible for that incident as well, although Tony had suspected that he hadn't been the one pulling all the strings. There were references to an international organization known as the Ten Rings, who had also had something to do with Tony's captivity in Afghanistan. Who they were and what they wanted was still a complete mystery to everyone, even though S.H.I.E.L.D. had been trying to figure them out ever since Tony had given them the first leads.

As always, Liu sat behind his impressive desk, smiling his dangerous smile. It was strange, she thought, that he didn't seem the least bit concerned or annoyed that she and House kept insisting they'd rather die than talk. It was almost as if he didn't care if they died without telling him a thing. Cold cruelty she might have expected, but this was more like complete indifference. Why had he gone through the trouble of capturing them, if he didn't actually want the information?

"And how are we today, Miss Potts?" Liu asked conversationally. "Still feeling defiant? Or perhaps a bit sick?"

"Just sick of seeing your smug face," she told him in her most vehement voice. "And my answer is still no."

The truth was, now that she thought about it, she did feel slightly under-the-weather, but she didn't know if it had anything to do with the virus. The circumstances weren't exactly beneficial, either. As she stood up from the chair to leave the room, she was struck by a bout of dizziness, not bad, but bad enough that it forced her to lean on the armrest. It didn't go unnoticed.

"Ah. See? That is how it begins," Liu said. "I have witnessed this virus in action, and it is not pleasant. You still have time to prevent it from advancing any further. Please, Miss Potts, think of this rationally. You are a young, intelligent, and beautiful woman, it would be stupid of you to give your life for someone like Tony Stark."

She gripped the armrest tightly with both hands, not out of vertigo, but anger. "You don't know anything about Tony! I would give my life for him if I had to - but I won't. He's going to get us out of here."

She believed it, she really did. He would come. She knew Tony, and she knew he'd get them out, whatever it took, or die trying. The only question was, would he get here in time?

"I wouldn't count on it," Liu said, as if answering her thoughts. "You can feel it yourself that you are running out of time. I will ask you again tomorrow, but by then, it may already be too late. Should you change your mind, you can knock on your door to contact the guards whenever you feel like talking to me again."


	5. "Go where? China?"

"Okay, Tony, now, just take it easy, I know this is nasty, but -"

"Nasty?!" Tony leaped up from the sofa, feeling like he might just spontaneously combust any moment. "That's the understatement of the year! You were there when that thing happened to me," he shouted, gesturing at the TV screen. "You know what it was like! I barely survived it in a state-of-the-art hospital, and there she is, stuck in a cell God knows where -"

"In China."

"- and you're telling me to take it easy even though we can't do anything to... Huh? China? Where did that come from?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. finally came up with a possible location. Sitwell's been trying to call you all morning to let you know, but since you haven't picked up..."

"Ah, shit," Tony said, and fell back on the sofa again, a hand on top of his head. He realized he was chuckling in a way that probably sounded more than a bit hysterical. Yeah, he'd been so completely beside himself, upset out of his wits thanks to that video clip, that he'd ignored his phone, certain that it wouldn't be anything related to Pepper anyway. He wasn't exactly sure what he felt right now - he couldn't believe how stupid he'd been, he was still furious, he was still worried to death about Pepper, but he was incredibly relieved to finally have news.

"I didn't get the specifics yet, I told him I'd call him back once I'd checked on you -"

Tony took a few deep breaths, trying to collect himself, and stood up again. "Okay, let's go," he said, and headed towards the stairs.

Rhodey grabbed his sleeve. "Tony, wait! Go where? China?"

Tony snorted. "Don't be an ass, Rhodey." He shook his arm free and continued on his way. "To the S.H.I.E.L.D. office in L.A., of course. I'm going to need all the details, and then we'll need to start planning the rescue operation. A phone conversation won't cut it, I need to be there myself."

After a half an hour of speeding with the R8, they were standing in a high-tech conference room with Coulson, Sitwell and a few other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, staring at a table that doubled as a huge touch screen - courtesy of Stark Industries, of course. It currently showed a satellite image of China.

"After a thorough examination of flight data from LAX and several airports in New Jersey, we were able to pinpoint the plane that was used to transport them out of the country," Sitwell explained, his face practically alight with enthusiasm. "It was actually entirely obvious once we got there, since one of the owners of the cargo company was linked to Liang-Miller Incorporated, which in turn has been suspected of ties to the Ten Rings for a while now -"

"Sitwell," Tony interrupted him. "I already know that there's a connection, thanks to that video I told you about - the nanovirus made it plain enough. So, stick to the business. I don't want a detective story, I want to know where they are."

"Right, right," Sitwell said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "So. The flight documents said the plane was headed to Beijing, but it never actually landed there. Instead, it went here," he pressed a finger on the screen, which zoomed in to show an airport at the outskirts of a city. "The city is called Jiayuguan. And there," he kept his finger on the screen and scrolled the image downwards from the city, to an area with rugged, mountainous terrain. "These are the Qilian mountains, and this here is our best bet on their current location," he tapped on a bright red point in the image.

The screen now showed a stretch of empty-looking land, mountains, sparse vegetation - no sign of anyone there, no buildings, as far as Tony could see. "Right. Invisible enemies with an invisible base?"

"Uh, sorry, sir," Sitwell muttered, and fiddled with the control panel at the low edge of the screen. "There."

Parts of the image lit up red, showing a large, carefully camouflaged entrance at the foot of a mountain. There were also a few smaller bright spots higher up in the rock wall, probably indicating side entrances and ventilation shafts.

"As you can see, it's well hidden, but we were able to spot it anyway, since, you know, we are very good at what we do," Sitwell said self-importantly.

Tony rewarded him with a quick smile. "This is great. So, what sort of plans does S.H.I.E.L.D. have for the rescue mission?"

Sitwell swallowed and stared at his feet.

"Mr. Stark, there's one thing you've got to understand," Coulson said slowly, his tone apologetic. "We only promised to help with locating them. We're chiefly an intelligence agency, not a military one. Going in blind and storming an enemy stronghold that might have heavy defenses isn't exactly the sort of thing we -"

"Oh, come on! I've seen you participate in countless military operations!"

"Participate, yes, but not conduct," Coulson replied. "And more than that, this base is on foreign soil, and there are substantial diplomatic concerns -"

"I don't care! My people are out there, and they're going to die unless we get them back soon! Rhodey, you're my military liaison. You've got contacts, you could make arrangements, right?"

"What sort of arrangements are you talking about?" Rhodey asked, frowning.

"Well, obviously, I'll be going in as Iron Man, but I'm going to need back-up. Possibly a few fighters in case they've got air defenses, and troops to aid in the search, since it's bound to be a real maze in there, and transport to get people there and back again, and obviously a bunch of medics - that sort of stuff. Whatever the Air Force can afford. And whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. can afford. The more the better. I'll help with the expenses, of course. Gather all we can get, then we can narrow it down to what we need, and head to China the first thing tomorrow."

"S-sir, just wait a minute -" Sitwell stuttered.

"Seriously, Mr. Stark, you can't -" Coulson tried.

"Zip it. Not interested," Tony interrupted them. "Can I count on you in this, Rhodey?" he asked, looking his friend in the eye.

"Sure, Tony... I'll do my best," Rhodey said, sounding only slightly hesitant.

Tony slapped him on the back and said, "I know you will. Thanks."

Okay, so, maybe Tony was going a bit over the top with this. They could try a more subtle approach, it would probably be a smarter choice - but the bastards had given Pepper the nanovirus! There was no time. The video had been timestamped two days ago, and the bad guy in it had said that the new version was faster than the one Tony had had. Better just hit the bad guys as hard and as soon as possible.

Thinking about the nanovirus gave Tony an idea. A big and important one. "There's something I need to do about the suit," he announced. "I'm heading back to my shop. Let me know when you've got this sorted out."

He rushed out of the room, leaving Rhodey and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents staring after him in a baffled silence.

  


* * *

  


House returned from his daily chat with Liu - a series of polite but patronizing questions and extremely rude answers - to find Potts lying on her bunk. She never did that during the days. She was always pacing, or sitting up, fiddling with the mattress or the hem of her skirt - all in all, always showing that this total lack of activity was state as alien to her as it was to him. So, obviously, her lying down and doing nothing was a symptom. She even looked slightly pale under her freckles.

House hobbled the few steps from the door to her bunk and sat down by her side.

"I think I'm starting to get sick," she told him. It was entirely redundant, since he'd already figured as much.

"Well, that means at least one of us now actually has something to do," House remarked. "Let's find out whether you're actually getting sick, or just think you are."

He went ahead and examined her as best he could under the circumstances. Of course, he couldn't get any definitive nor entirely reliable data - there was no way he could get exact counts without a watch, just estimations. Of course, his estimations were better than many others' actual measurements would be. What he found fit in with what was to be expected: elevated respiratory and heart rate and a slight fever. Add to that the dizziness and muscle pains that Potts described herself, and she had the exact same early symptoms Stark had had when he'd gotten the nanovirus.

"Okay, it's not just in your head. Unless I'm imagining things too, you really are getting sick." House declared his diagnosis, and retreated to his bunk.

He sat with his back against the wall, rubbing his horribly aching thigh. Was he getting sick as well? He'd have expected to get the symptoms first, since she obviously had better immune defenses than he did at the moment. Then again, it was also possible that he was already sick and had been for a while, and just hadn't noticed it. He had been dizzy, his muscles were achy, and his pulse was clearly on the fast side as well. It might all be due to the withdrawal, or it might be because of the nanovirus. No way to be sure.

"How long do you think it's going to take?" Potts asked somberly.

"If this progresses like the strain that Stark had, you'll start having trouble breathing sometime tomorrow, and it'll keep growing steadily worse up to the point when you'll be completely unable to breathe on your own. As for when that's going to happen, it's impossible to predict. Same goes for me, of course. I might start getting worse sooner than you, though. Can't be sure."

"Oh, God... Tony really needs to get here soon," Potts said. Pathetic.

By now, House knew Potts was actually quite smart, not just a pretty face, and he couldn't believe how she kept putting so much faith in Stark. Superhero or not, he was only human. It was entirely possible that he wouldn't be able to locate them, or that he'd be unable to reach them. And it would be lame beyond description if they did nothing but sat here and waited for Stark or death, whichever arrived first.

"We should start considering other options," House thought aloud. "We could talk to Liu and get the cure." He supposed she'd understand that he didn't really mean giving out any information, just pretending to. He was pretty sure she could pull it off. She was used to dealing with the press, after all, and that called for a decent poker face.

"You suppose they really have a cure?"

"I suppose you actually have a brain. First of all, they'd need to have a cure as a safety measure, in case one of their own got infected. Secondly, what would be the point of capturing us, infecting us and trying to get information from us, if they didn't have one? What would they gain if we gave in and promised to talk, but dropped dead before we could tell them everything we knew?"

"I just think there's something weird about the way Liu is acting, like he doesn't care all that much about the information."

"He's obviously a sociopath, you can't expect to read much from his behavior," House said, and waved at the surveillance camera. Liu might hear every word they were saying, in which case any sort of plotting would be completely pointless.

Potts caught his gesture, and seemed to get the implications. She grimaced. "Well, I'm not going to talk. Not yet, anyway. We can wait a bit longer."

  


* * *

  


At around 1730, Rhodey was back at the mansion, wondering how the hell he was going to give the news to Tony. He'd rather have walked into a minefield. Even though Tony's expectations had been unrealistic to begin with, Rhodey was still disappointed in himself. He had done his best, like he had promised, but in this case, his best was nowhere near good enough.

He found Tony in the workshop, just like he had expected, sitting at a desk, working intently on the Iron Man suit's gauntlets. He didn't even look up when Rhodey entered the room.

"Almost done here. When can we leave?"

"Uh, well, Tony," Rhodey began. Damn. Here it came. "I've talked to all my connections, everyone I could think of, but..."

Rhodey's nervous tone seemed to catch Tony's attention. He let go of the gauntlet he'd been tinkering with, and turned to face Rhodey. "But what?"

"Coulson did mention that there would be diplomatic problems. Tony, you've got to understand, our relations with China aren't exactly an easy and straightforward business, and, well - ah, shit. It's going to take days before we can get clearance for any sort of an official operation. In a worst case scenario, we might not get it at all - because the way they see this, we're just talking about two civilians, it's not exactly a matter of great importance when it comes to national security..."

"For fuck's sake, Rhodey!" Tony slammed the table with his fist, so hard that the gauntlets leaped a few inches into the air. "I can't believe I'm actually hearing this! Pepper doesn't have days - if we don't get there soon it's going to be too late - I can't believe this, I just fucking can't believe it!"

"I'm sorry, Tony, I really am, but that's the way it is. We're not going to get any help from them unless we wait. I did get their unofficial, off-the-record OK for an Iron Man mission, as long as it's a covert one. That's the best we can get at short notice."

What Rhodey didn't say aloud was, Nick Fury had also made Rhodey promise he'd do his best to keep Tony under control, to prevent him from turning this into a diplomatic disaster. The very idea made Rhodey feel like a traitor, though he had to admit that Fury did have a point. He knew telling Tony about it would only make things worse, so he kept it to himself.

"If that's how it's going to be, fine!" Tony declared grimly. "I'll go and get them out of there all by myself, if that's what it takes."

"Not all by yourself," Rhodey said, and put a hand on Tony's shoulder. "You might not have an army, but there's going to be a War Machine by your side."

"Absolutely out of the question!" Tony exclaimed, and pulled away from him. "No. That suit's never been tested in action -"

"The suit's fine, we've been testing it for weeks and there's nothing wrong with it. Hell, I'm sure your suit wasn't half as ready when you first took it into a battle zone."

"Pepper's life is already in jeopardy because of me, I'm not going to let another friend risk theirs - Rhodey, no. I won't allow it."

"Look, Tony. Two suits are better than one. You wanted help, you've got it. I'm coming. You can knock me out if you want to, I'll just get myself a plane and follow you anyway."

"Damn it, Rhodey!" Tony shouted. He was breathing hard, his fists raised in front of him, looking like he really was about to punch Rhodey in the face.

Rhodey didn't as much as flinch. "Yeah. Face it, pal. You're not going in there alone."

They both fell silent, and just stared at each other - a Mexican standoff without guns. They'd been in similar situations before, and it was always Rhodey who gave up, because Tony was way more stubborn than he was, and a lot less reasonable. This time was different, though. There was only one possible outcome.

Finally, Tony let his hands fall to his sides and said, "Okay. I can finish this during the flight. Pack your stuff. I'll call my staff to get the jet ready for departure."

  


* * *

  


By the morning of their fourth day in captivity, both Pepper and House had started coughing.

"If we don't talk to Liu today, there's a good chance neither of us will live to see tomorrow morning," House said in a toneless voice.

"Yeah, I know."

Pepper knew they should do it. They should knock on the door and ask the guards to take them to Liu, and lie their teeth off to convince him that they had changed their mind and wanted to talk. If it went well, they'd be cured. If Liu didn't believe them, the worst thing that could happen would be that he'd kill them, but they were dying anyway. They had nothing to lose. And still, she didn't want to, didn't want to even pretend to sell out Tony - and she wasn't sure she could actually pull it off.

"Waiting for this to get any worse would be stupid, since we're going to talk sooner or later anyway," House said, like he could guess exactly what she was thinking. Was she really that easy to read? If she was, Liu might see through her too.

House sat up slowly, moved his good leg over the edge of his bunk and lifted his bad leg after it. "I'm going to do it right now. Potts, are you with me in this? If you're not, I can go alone, but that'll only save me. I don't think they'll help you just because I've decided to cooperate, no matter how nicely I ask."

She rubbed her eyes, and couldn't help noticing how feverishly hot her face was. "I... Yeah. Let's do it," she decided.

As she got off the bed, the room tilted and melted into a blurry haze, and she had to sit down again. Well, she thought, maybe she could be able to fool Liu. She was so sick already that it'd be hard to tell whether she was hesitant and red in the face because she was lying, or because she was ill.

House had already knocked on the door. It swung open to reveal a very suspicious-looking thug. "What?" he asked.

"Oh, wow, you speak English? I'm impressed," House sneered. "We need to see Liu. Right now."

"Yes," the guard said, and called out in a language Pepper couldn't recognize. Soon, three more cronies appeared behind him. Two of them grabbed House between them. Pepper got up and took a few swaying steps towards the door. The other two guards took her between them, pulling her arms over their shoulders. Soon, they were on their way towards Liu's room, half-carried by the guards.

The guards dropped them on two armchairs opposing Liu's desk, bowed reverently, and left the room.

"Well, well," Liu said. "You have finally come to your senses, have you? Or are you simply desperate and attempting to lie your way out of trouble?"

Pepper did her best to keep her face blank. "Look, this wasn't an easy decision to make. We don't want to die, so we're going to talk," she told him.

"I suppose a man of your intelligence could see through lies easily, anyway," House said - not a flattering remark, but a sarcastic one.

"Ah, Doctor House, you'd better drop the antagonism. In exchange for the cure, I will expect your full cooperation. Now, prove to me that you're sincere, and tell me what you know about Iron Man. How can one harm him when he's in the suit? How can one get him out of the suit?"

It took all Pepper's willpower not to shout "I won't tell you anything!" at the top of her voice. Instead, she started with an easy near-truth. "The suit is locked, you need voice authorization to open it, and the only people who have that are Tony and me." Tony had mentioned he was considering doing something like that, or a fingerprint or retina scanner, but so far, it was just talk. Anyway, it was a fact that wouldn't help the bad guys at all.

"Interesting," Liu said. "Please, do go on."

They did, coming up with a series of lies that she hoped would sound realistic, but which were far enough from the truth that they wouldn't be of any use against Tony. She couldn't estimate how convincing she was herself, but House was every bit as good at this as she had expected. If she hadn't known he was lying, she would never have guessed. He gave Liu extremely exact-sounding facts, like an accurate description of completely made-up health problems that he claimed Tony had had since Afghanistan, and understated numbers for how much heat and cold the suit could stand, or how long its internal oxygen supply would last.

"I think that's enough," House finished. "Cure us of the virus, and we'll tell you the rest of what we know."

"Very well, my dear Doctor," Liu said. "I'll keep my promise, but you must understand I can't fully trust any of what you've said. As it is, according to my contacts, Stark is currently on his way here. That means that by tomorrow, we should be able to test your information. I sincerely hope you'll survive until then, because I won't give you the cure before I can be sure you're telling the truth."


	6. "At least this is a lot cooler than dying of old age"

In a matter of hours, Rhodey was sitting in the jet with Tony, on the way to his very first mission as an armored superhero. They spent the first hours of the flight trying to make plans. Unfortunately, the data S.H.I.E.L.D. had come up with gave them the possible entrances to the complex they were attacking and little more than that. They had no information about what they were up against: who, exactly, let alone how many men, or what sort of weaponry. At least they wouldn't need to worry about the nanovirus or other biological weapons as long as they were in the suits.

They would arrive at the outskirts of the mountain range around midnight local time. That was good, because that way, they could take advantage of the darkness. Rhodey was sure that had they arrived at daytime, Tony would've wanted to dash into action in bright daylight, which was exactly the sort of thing Fury wanted Rhodey to prevent. Now, he wouldn't need to worry about it.

The flight would take about fifteen hours. It was night back home, and Rhodey was well aware that one should be rested and alert when going into battle. It'd be a very good idea for them to spend some time sleeping. He tried to suggest this to Tony, but predictably enough, he wouldn't hear of it. Instead, he retreated into a room he'd set up as a makeshift workshop, to continue working on his suit. Rhodey shook his head, took off his shoes and lay down on a couch. Falling asleep in almost any circumstances was a skill he'd learned early during his career in the Air Force. At times like this, it definitely came in handy. He only wished he could somehow teach it to Tony.

When Rhodey woke up some six hours later, they were only a few hours away from landing. He was surprised to find Tony asleep on the next couch. Rhodey had expected he'd be nodding over his work, but apparently he had actually finished it.

Rhodey woke Tony up, and they went over the little data they had once more, over their morning - or night, or whatever - coffee. Then, finally, it was time. They helped each other into their suits, got into the cargo bay, and opened the hatch.

Rhodey stared at the dark night sky outside the plane. In the suit, he couldn't even feel the wind, although he could hear its roar. He had plenty of experience in parachuting, but this was a whole new thing altogether. He wasn't going to jump into free fall, he'd just get off of the plane and, with the help of the suit, catch his balance and keep flying. He knew his own reactions were far too slow for the fine, quick corrections, so he'd just have to let his suit's copy of Jarvis take care of it. He didn't exactly like that idea. As much as he trusted Tony's engineering skills, he wanted to be his own pilot, thank you very much.

Tony had done this before, of course, and he went first. He stepped forwards, and disappeared into the night, out of sight in a wink.

Rhodey wouldn't claim that he wasn't scared. He was. Still, he was used to doing scary stuff - and this was also incredibly cool. He didn't hesitate for longer than a few seconds. Then, he flung his silver-and-black-armored self out of the Stark Jet.

There was the slightest moment of the familiar sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach before the suit AI took over. It had the stabilizers fire a quick series of bursts, and in a matter of seconds, he was soaring through the air on his own. The jet was already far ahead of him, the distance between them growing rapidly.

Rhodey told Jarvis to let go of the controls, and tried them himself, taking the suit through a quick series of rolls and loops. Oh yeah. Tony had said that Rhodey's suit didn't steer quite as well as his, because it had more weaponry and was heavier and less agile, but if anyone asked Rhodey, this was more than enough. It was the closest thing to flying he'd ever tried - closer than the exhilarating floating sensation of free fall, and a lot closer than piloting a plane.

"War Machine, this is Iron Man, do you copy?" Tony's voice reverberated inside Rhodey's helmet.

"Ohh yeah, Iron Man. War Machine hears you loud and clear," Rhodey replied. "Man, I love this suit."

"Yeah, it's great, isn't it? But this isn't a pleasure trip," Tony said. He emerged in Rhodey's view, the bright lights in his suit's eyes and chest standing out clearly in the dark. "We're still half an hour away from target. There's no time to waste."

  


* * *

  


House definitely hadn't seen that one coming. He had reckoned that Liu would either give them the cure, or outright refuse to listen to them. Instead, they were taken back to their cell to wait for Stark's purported arrival. House didn't know what to think about that. Was Stark really on his way, or was Liu just playing some weird game with them? He couldn't figure out what Liu would gain from this. They'd already promised to cooperate, putting more pressure on them wouldn't lead to anything. Then again, maybe this had never been about the information, after all. Maybe it had been about getting Stark here all along, and the possibility of getting useful information from them had been nothing but an added bonus. Maybe Liu actually wanted them to die, just to get to Stark.

"At least it wasn't all bad news," Potts said once they'd settled on their bunks again. "Tony's on his way here."

"Yeah, it's nice to know there'll be a friendly soul around to hear our last words," House said sardonically.

"Do you..." Potts began in a shaky voice, and coughed. "You really think we're going to die?"

"I'm just being realistic. The odds are against us."

House tried to estimate how long they would last, but it was difficult. Liu had said they'd been infected soon after they'd been kidnapped, and assuming House had the times and dates figured out correctly, the first symptoms had emerged three days after that, as opposed to the four days of the strain Stark had had.

In Stark's case, it had taken over a day for the disease to progress into the cardiopulmonary phase, and over twelve hours from that to the point when they had had to intubate him. Then again, he had been on supplemental oxygen long before that, which was something House and Potts wouldn't have. So, even if this new version of the nanovirus progressed at the same pace as the old one, they'd be in trouble far earlier than Stark had been.

Even if Stark got here soon, they still wouldn't be out of the woods. The nanovirus-HPS wasn't exactly easy to treat. House didn't even know if this new strain was susceptible to EMPs like the old one had been. Most likely it was, and that was the cure that Liu was talking about.

Still, no matter which way he looked at it, the prognosis totally sucked.

"I don't think we're going to die," Potts said, though she sounded far from reassuring. "I trust Tony."

House sighed, exasperated. He couldn't understand how someone with as much common sense as Potts could be so deluded in this matter. It was like a religion. The church of the almighty Man of Iron, who could perform miracles and deny the laws of nature, with her as its head priestess.

"This isn't about trust, this is about scientific facts," he told her. "The nanovirus doesn't care how much you trust him. Your faith and love aren't going to stop it."

"I know that, but it still doesn't mean we can't survive. Besides, if believing that we'll be rescued makes me hopeful instead of miserable, what's so wrong with it?"

"It's pure fiction, that's what's wrong. It's got nothing to do with reality."

"I'll rather take the fiction that makes me happy than spend my last hours wallowing in self-pity."

"Have it your way. I'll be waiting for you by the self-pity pool once you decide to face the facts."

They fell into a heavy, oppressive silence.

If House had thought the previous days had been painful, tedious and boring, they had been child's play compared to this. They lay on their bunks, stared at the ceiling and waited. They were brought food, but neither of them had the energy or the appetite to eat more than a few spoonfuls.

As time plodded on, House began to feel the effects of the virus on his breathing - it was as if the air in the room was growing thinner, like there wasn't quite enough oxygen in it. He could hear Potts's breathing had grown clearly faster and louder than normal, too.

House had been face-to-face with death several times before, and he had no illusions about it: he knew it was the end, as simple as that. There was nothing more to it. His personality, his mind, his memories, it would all be gone forever, but he wouldn't be around to care about it. Whether anyone else would care wouldn't matter either, when he was nonexistent himself. Nevertheless, in some pathetically emotional corner of his mind, he found himself wishing someone were here with him. Someone like Stacy, or maybe Wilson. One of the few real friends he'd had during his life.

After House had stuck a knife into a wall socket, seeking a near-death experience, Wilson had blamed him for not caring whether he lived or died. That hadn't been very far from the truth. House wasn't afraid of dying, and there were days when he thought there was no point to it all. Unfortunately, today wasn't one of those days. On the contrary, even though he'd been suffering ever since they'd been kidnapped, this situation was the sort of stuff that made life worth living. He had been kidnapped by the evil enemies of a superhero - just how awesome was that?

"At least this is a lot cooler - than dying of old age - or liver failure, thanks to all the Vicodin," he said aloud, his speech already affected by the trouble he had catching his breath.

"We're not going to die," Potts declared, and lapsed into a long fit of coughing.

"Everyone dies, sooner or later."

"Oh, come on!"

When the lights went off, marking the beginning of their fourth night here, breathing was such a strain that House wondered whether he'd just pass out and suffocate if he stopped struggling. And there was still no sign of Stark.

  


* * *

  


Finally, they had reached their goal. The mountains were huge, dark things looming around them in the night, and without all the navigation and scanners in the suit Tony might have flown straight into one of them.

They slowed down as they approached the enemy base. They had decided to use one of the side entrances, and at least try to take their enemies by surprise, although it was almost certain they'd fail. There was still a lot of room for improvement in the suits' stealth abilities.

Sure enough, they were over a mile away from the base when Jarvis gave them a warning: they were being targeted. Several missiles shot out at them from three different sites in the mountains.

"Rhodey! Look out!" Tony shouted. "I'll take the launchers on the left, you take that one on the right."

They separated. Tony headed towards the nearest weapons platform, shooting at the approaching missiles as he went. He got them both, but two new ones were already headed for him. He hit the one that was in front of him before it could get too close. With one missile still following him, he accelerated, going straight at the rock wall ahead of him, and the rocket launcher set in it. At the last moment, he swerved to the side and then straight up. The missile wasn't able to follow, but hit the launcher, destroying it in a large explosion.

There was still the other launcher - Tony turned towards it, but quickly found out that it wasn't there anymore. Rhodey had already taken it down. Of course, he had more guns than Tony. He could rely on firepower alone, no need for tricks like the one Tony had used.

That had been almost too easy.

"Hey, Rustbucket, what took you so long?" Rhodey greeted him.

"Had to check out the local chicks on the way. Now, let's see... Jarvis, show me the S.H.I.E.L.D. data."

The entrances emerged on the HUD as clear red patches in the mountainside. There was the big door at ground-level, and a few smaller ones higher up, apparently accessible through narrow paths. Tony fired a few shots at the nearest one of those. The door was blasted apart, revealing a corridor opening into the depths of the mountain.

"After you," Rhodey said.

Tony was already on his way.

The corridor was full of thugs, but they had nothing but ordinary weapons on them, nothing that'd make Tony worry the least bit. He flew straight at them, not even bothering to return their shots. The smarter ones among them ducked or ran. A few unfortunate idiots got in the way, and were knocked out as he hit them head-first. That barely even slowed him down.

He landed on the floor, facing the remaining guards, who had all their guns pointed at him. Tony shook his metal-covered head at them. "You know that's not going to help you," he told them.

He heard a metallic clank behind him as Rhodey landed in the corridor, too. "I'd run if I were you," he added to Tony's comment.

The thugs eyed each other uncertainly - a few of them seemed to be trembling in fear, and some had bullet wounds from friendly fire or ricochets.

Tony raised his hands, pointing his repulsors at them. He could hear the gatling gun and the rocket launcher slide from their flight positions into their combat positions on Rhodey's suit next to him.

The thugs turned and fled.

"See, Iron Man? Teamwork isn't such a bad idea," Rhodey said.

"Yeah, except so far, there's been nothing I couldn't have handled on my own, and I think we should split up now."

"You would've been in trouble with the anti-aircraft artillery out there."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Would too. But I agree on the splitting up."

"I'll take that doorway on the right, you go on straight ahead."

This was probably going to be the most the most tedious part of the mission. They had no idea how big the base was, let alone where Pepper and House were. Tony almost hoped he'd meet some resistance, otherwise this would be damn boring.

  


* * *

  


Pepper was incredibly tired. The dark room was spinning around her even though she had been lying down for hours and hours, and no matter how hard she tried, she wasn't getting enough air. She could hear House struggling in exactly the same manner. It was like some macabre competition - which one would suffocate first?

She knew she shouldn't fall asleep, because if she did, she'd probably never wake up, and she was afraid. No matter how adamantly she'd defended her views to House, how she'd claimed that Tony was on his way and would save them, she wasn't sure she even believed it herself anymore. Maybe Liu had just given them the false hope to make them more miserable, and was now sitting behind his desk staring at them through the surveillance camera, enjoying the show.

When she heard a low boom from somewhere far away and felt the floor tremble slightly, she first thought she'd just drifted to sleep and imagined the whole thing.

"House?"

"Yeah." The tone of his voice told her more than the short word itself. It was the most optimistic thing he had said in days.

Something was happening. All of a sudden, she felt full of hope again, and more determined to take yet another breath, and another, to suck in as much oxygen as she could, because they wouldn't need to wait long now. They were going to get out of here. Tony was here. Everything would be all right.

She thought she heard more sounds, still muffled, maybe gunshots echoing in the corridors. She slid off the bed. She was so dizzy and weak that she didn't even bother to get up, but crawled on the floor to the door, and pressed her ear against it to hear better.

The sounds were getting closer. Footsteps, running, and then walking - heavy footsteps, and a familiar blasting sound she'd heard before - the repulsors in the suit's palms.

She banged on the door and shouted "Tony! Here!" as loud as her failing lungs allowed.

"Stand back!" came the answer. She crawled away from the door and behind her bunk.

There was a loud bang, and the door flew open, with a huge hole where the lock had been. Iron Man stood in the doorway, the light flowing in from the corridor gleaming on the familiar red and gold of his armor.

"That's - the most beautiful thing - I've ever seen," House panted.

Tony ignored him completely. "Pepper!" he said, his gaze fixed on her. It sounded funny to hear her name in that deep, metallic rumble.

He stepped closer and knelt, and she tried to hug him, but ended up just collapsing bonelessly into his gold-titanium-covered arms. He grasped her somewhat clumsily. The smooth, cool metal felt soothing against her skin.

"Tony... Thank God," she whispered.

"We've got the nanovirus," House rasped from his side of the room. "We're out of time - and air."

"Yeah, I know," Tony said, stood up and set Pepper gently on her bunk. "And I can do something about it. Rhodey, get out of here right now," he spoke the last sentence in a different tone, obviously to his suit's radio. "I've found them, and I'm going to hit the whole goddamn mountain with an EMP. You suit's not shielded. Get out of here and fast."

Rhodey was here, too, then? Pepper hadn't expected that, even though she knew Tony had been building him a suit. She had had no idea it was ready for action. Maybe it wasn't, not exactly, if Tony had to tell Rhodey to flee like that.

Tony didn't give Rhodey a whole lot of time to escape. Standing between their bunks, he brought his hands together showily. She heard something click into place as the gauntlets' palms met each other.

Suddenly, all the lights went out.

They were left in darkness that was complete except for the light of Tony's arc reactor. Even his suit's eyes weren't glowing anymore.

"Okay, that was cool," Tony said. Though his tone was nonchalant, his voice sounded strange - not deep and menacing, just muffled, with a tinny echo.

"What's wrong - with the suit?" Pepper asked.

"Uh, nothing you need to worry about. I knew this would happen. All my systems are offline, but they should come back online after a while."

He'd known this would happen, and he'd still done it? Right, she'd been here so long that she had already been starting to forget what a complete idiot he was.

"How soon?" House asked.

"I've no idea, never tried this before. Sometime between a minute and an hour. Not going to wait that long, though. I can still move."

Awkwardly, he turned around and made his way to the door, every slow footstep a heavy, metallic thud. She could only imagine the strength it required for him to move the suit on nothing but muscle power.

The loud noise of gunfire erupted the very second Tony had walked through the doorway. Of course, the bright light in his chest would make him instantly visible and an easy target.

He stepped back into the room. "Okay, this could be a problem. So, here's the plan: I'm going to distract them. You need to get out of here. Can you walk?"

"Stupid question," House groaned.

"You can follow the walls, lean on them. The exit's not that far. To the left from the door, all the way to the end of the corridor, then left again, the next turn right, and the last one left, and you'll see it from there. Rhodey should be waiting for you outside."

"Tony, no! We can't - leave you here alone!" Pepper exclaimed.

"Pepper, I've got my armor, I'm not in any danger. The systems will restart, and then I can blast my way out of here. Just wait until they've stopped firing in this direction, and then go."

Tony stepped out of the door, back into the unsettling sound of bullets flying in his direction, and disappeared from view. From the heavy clanks of his footsteps, she could guess he was walking right towards the bad guys.


	7. "What's this? A rescue attempt?"

Even though things had started off looking ridiculously easy, it didn't last long. Rhodey advanced quickly, going through corridor after corridor, seeing no obvious signs of Pepper or House and meeting only light resistance. He walked on, took a turn to the right - and suddenly there was a deafening bang, and the corridor around him exploded in flames.

He backed away quickly. There'd been no serious damage to his suit, but he didn't think he could take many hits like that. On the other hand, he wasn't sure the corridor could, either. These goons had to be out of their minds to use weaponry as heavy as that inside their own base. He wondered how well-reinforced the metallic walls of the corridor were. So far, there were no signs of them collapsing, but he sure wouldn't want to put any more strain on them.

Rhodey looked around the corner again and shot a few quick blasts with his palm repulsors, trying to get some idea of what he was up against. He saw nothing but an empty, battered corridor, with water spraying from sprinklers. By the looks of it, the bad guys were hiding behind a corner, too.

He took a moment to consider his options. If there were heavily armed people there, the chances were that he was approaching something important. Then again, he might need to use heavy weapons himself to get through them, and he didn't want to, it was way too risky in here.

He was still pondering what to do when his radio came to life. "I've found them, and I'm going to hit the whole goddamn mountain with an EMP. You suit's not shielded. Get out of here and fast," Tony shouted urgently.

An electromagnetic pulse. Yeah, that made sense. It'd not only help the sick captives, but also seriously impair their enemies. Now that Rhodey thought about it, it was probably the thing Tony had been working on so intently during the last day or so. He just hadn't bothered to mention it to Rhodey. Typical. Maybe he'd forgotten - but more likely he hadn't told Rhodey because it was potentially dangerous in some way or the other, and telling him would've meant that he would've argued against it. It was obviously too late to do that now.

Making a mental note to talk about this to Tony once they were all safely out of here, he ignited his thrusters and took off. He flew through the narrow corridors at breakneck speed, the slightly clumsy suit only just managing the tight turns he put it through.

He could see the exit - he was out in the dark night air - and zap. His suit went dead.

Without his thrusters, War Machine fell like a ton of bricks.

The fall wasn't a very long one. He had been just outside the exit, near to the side of the mountain, so he hit the rock almost instantly, and slid down the steep slope, seeing nothing but black, hearing the metal of his suit screech against stone like nails on a blackboard - until he came to an abrupt stop. He passed out before he'd even felt the impact.

  


* * *

  


"House? Come on!" Potts whispered from where their cell's door was. The sound of gunfire had ceased, as had the echo of Iron Man's footfalls.

House struggled to his feet, leaning first on the bunk, then against the wall. Just staying upright was the challenge of a lifetime. The room was swaying like the deck of a ship. What wouldn't he give for some extra oxygen and a few Vicodin - but oh no, things were never that easy for him. Even if the EMP Stark had hit them with had killed the nanovirus, it would take hours before the symptoms began to ease off.

Following the wall, he made his way to the door in the dark room. Potts was apparently leaning on the door frame on the other side. House peeked out. The corridor was pitch-dark and perfectly silent.

"Let's go," Potts said, and House heard and felt her leave the room. By the sound of her footsteps, she was heading to the right from their door.

"You're going the wrong way!" House hissed after her.

"I won't abandon Tony," she replied.

He could hardly believe his ears. She wanted to follow Stark, when he'd most likely been taken hostage? That was completely insane. "There's nothing - we can do!" he told her. "I'm leaving."

House pushed himself through the doorway, and stepped to the left, his weight on his good leg and the wall next to him. He started making his slow, shuffling way along the corridor. Potts wasn't following him. She was still going in the other direction.

"Potts, you idiot!" he whispered sharply.

"We need to - find out what's - happened to him," she answered.

House had never been one for heroics. He was as rational as a man could be. The only sensible course of action here was to follow Stark's plan and get out if only they could. Even that wasn't an easy task, because not only were they nearly unable to walk, it was also entirely possible that they'd run into guards while trying to escape.

Still, considering the situation, she was sort-of doing the right thing. After all, wasn't it the job of the hero's sidekicks to do their best to help when the hero was in trouble, even if it was desperate and completely irrational? Obviously, they couldn't know whether Stark was in trouble without checking.

How many times in his life was House going to be in a situation like this? Most likely never again. If he did the rational thing and escaped, while Potts heroically went to Stark, and if they all lived to tell the tale, he'd feel like a complete loser and a wimp afterwards.

Cursing himself for being such a sucker for cool stories, he turned around and followed Potts.

It took them ages just to reach the end of the corridor where their cell was. They looked in both directions, but there was nothing but darkness. Luckily, all the bad guys seemed to be entirely tied up with the armored superheroes, so there was no one patrolling the place.

"We'll turn right," House whispered. "To Liu." That was, after all, where the cronies were most likely to take Stark, if they'd managed to capture him. Considering how silent it had been since the sounds of gunfire had stopped, Stark most likely hadn't regained his suit's functions yet.

"Right," Potts repeated, and stumbled forwards.

Liu's room wasn't far from their cell, just a few more turns. Soon, they could hear his all-too-familiar, falsely polite voice echo in the empty passageways. When they reached the corridor where his room was, they saw light flowing through the open door. To their amazement, there were no guards outside it. Warily, they inched closer.

House peered in. Liu had had the armchairs moved aside, leaving a wide empty space. He was standing in front of the desk, leaning on it with one hand in a casual posture, gesturing with the other as he spoke. In front of him, on the huge, expensive-looking oriental carpet, lay Iron Man, his armor clearly worse for wear. He was bound with his feet together and his arms at his sides. There were at least twenty goons in the room, and they all had guns pointed at him.

  


* * *

  


This wasn't exactly how Tony had expected the operation to go.

He'd known that the EMP would cause the suit systems to crash. It had been unavoidable - he hadn't had time to design new shielding, he'd had no choice but to make do with what he'd already had. Hopefully, it had kept the suit tech from getting entirely fried. Unless something had gone seriously wrong, the systems should restart in less than an hour. If they didn't, he'd have to come up with an alternative course of action. The most important thing was that the EMP had worked, and it should stop Pepper and House from getting any worse than they already were.

Of course, the details about Tony's suit also applied to Rhodey's suit, the basics were all the same. Tony had told a little white lie when he'd said that it wasn't shielded, to get Rhodey out of here. He needed Rhodey as back-up, with a fully functional suit, and he was pretty sure Rhodey would have refused to leave Tony alone in here if he had known that their suits had similar shielding, or lack thereof. Now, if everything had gone like Tony had planned, Rhodey would be outside, with perfectly working armor, maybe already on his way back to the base, to help Pepper and House.

What Tony hadn't planned for was that their enemies had kept their calm even though they were faced with a base-wide blackout. Hence the fact that he was now marching towards a merry little band of them, which was probably not the smartest possible move he could've made. Lifting the suit's boots off the floor to step forwards took almost all his strength. There was no way he was going to be able to fight in it without power.

Offline or not, the armor still protected him well from the bullets that kept hitting it. As he got closer to his enemies, the shots grew sparser. The cronies pointed at him with flashlights, and talked in low voices, in a language - or languages - that Tony didn't know. Maybe a few words of Chinese in there, and some Russian.

They had probably figured out by now that he was defenseless.

A few brave thugs approached him slowly, pointing their rifles at him. They were so near that they might actually damage his suit - then again, if they shot from this close a range, they'd put themselves at risk, too.

Tony tried to lift his hand, hoping he could at least throw a punch at them, but the movement was so sluggish that it was no good. The cronies looked at each other with wicked grins on their faces, stepped closer, braced their palms against his shoulders and pushed.

There was nothing he could do. He fell and landed flat on his back. The baddies pinned him to the floor, making him as helpless as a turtle that'd been turned over.

Some more bad guys appeared by his sides, and tied him up with a thick metallic cable. Had his suit been online, it would've been no problem at all for him to break the chains, but now, they left him with absolutely zero mobility.

The cronies grabbed his suit's legs and heaved. It took about four of them to move his metallic bulk.

"Hey, guys, come on, I could just walk on my own, it's not like I could run away even if I wanted to," he tried, but it was no good.

They started dragging him through the corridors in what was about the most humiliating manner he could imagine. The only good thing was that it was a pretty short distance.

He was hauled through a doorway into a large, almost hall-like room that was lit by a collection of lanterns, candles and lamps. Compared to the complete darkness everywhere else, it looked very bright. The eyeholes of the mask gave Tony a rather narrow field of vision, but he thought he could see porcelain vases, antique items and sculptures placed on pedestals and tables. By the feel of the floor under him, he could guess it was covered with a rug of some sort. The thugs left him in the middle of the room and retreated just far enough that he could see them at the edges of his vision, their guns still trained on him.

A face emerged above him, a round, bald face, with a vaguely Asian appearance.

"Anthony Stark. How wonderful to finally meet you. Your attempt to attack us was quite entertaining, but as you can see, it was merely a minor setback to us, and we now have you exactly where we wanted to. My name is Liu. You may have heard of me," the man introduced himself, and flashed him a smile that was anything but friendly.

"Yeah. You're the sorry bastard who already tried to kill me once and failed. What makes you think you'll do any better this time?"

"Actually, this time, it is not my task to kill you. On the contrary, my master would be quite angry if I were to rob him of the pleasure. However, I have been given the challenging task of prying you out of your metal shell, and if I must harm you to achieve that goal, I doubt he will mind."

Okay, that was a slightly disturbing thought. The armor was good, but it wasn't impenetrable, and there were quite a few ways to hurt Tony even when he was still in it. Especially now that everything was offline, they could just toast him with a flamethrower for a while and cook him like a lobster. Not a very encouraging thought. Better try and keep Liu talking before he got to actually doing anything.

Tony needed to buy the time it took for his suit to restart, or for Rhodey to show up and bust him out of here. Besides, he might be able to get some useful information, like more insight about who these Ten Rings guys were and who their mysterious leader was.

"Your master. So, you're just a hireling. Who's the real number one?" he asked Liu.

"Patience, Iron Man! He will introduce himself once he decides to grace us with his presence, but that won't happen until the situation here has, ah, stabilized somewhat."

"Seriously, am I supposed to be afraid of you guys? Your boss is obviously an even bigger coward than you are. And luring me away from home to kidnap my defenseless employees - that was just sad. Do you go around snatching candy from babies in your spare time?"

"Actually, my pastimes consist of a combination of torture, art collecting, golf, and human experimentation, and today, I shall have all but one of those," Liu answered, sounding pretty pleased with his wit. 

"You're going to skip golf because you're afraid you'd lose?"

Liu ignored Tony's comment. "We shall begin with the last of the list." He lifted a container of some sort into Tony's view - it looked like a spray can, made of white plastic.

"Well, good luck with that. Shouldn't you be getting me out of the suit first? It's going to be sort of hard to, say, infect me with anything when I'm perfectly protected." Of course, that was a blatant lie - his suit wasn't sealed at the moment - but Liu wouldn't know that.

"I wouldn't try the same trick twice, that would be much too unimaginative. No, this isn't a virus, it's an entirely new creation from my ingenious nanotechnologists. It shouldn't harm living tissue - I'm using the conditional here, as it hasn't been extensively tested yet. On the other hand, our tests have proven that it's detrimental to most metals."

Liu put the canister right in front of Tony's face, so that it was pretty much the only thing he could see. He heard the hiss as a fine mist was sprayed over his mask, and then lower, over the rest of his suit. He couldn't feel it, and he had no idea whether he should be worried about this or not. Maybe he should - if this stuff was even half as nasty as the nanovirus, he might be in serious trouble soon. Since Liu didn't know about the arc reactor, he probably had no idea that a metal-eating thing that didn't harm living tissue might be life-threatening to Tony.

"It will take some time before the effects begin to show up, but don't worry, we won't get bored. I'm convinced we can come up with plenty of other, fun experiments to try while we wait," Liu said, grinning maliciously.

  


* * *

  


Things had turned completely upside down. Pepper had been desperately waiting for Tony to come and save them, but now that he'd finally arrived, she was free, while he was a captive at Liu's mercy. If she hadn't taken a look into Liu's room and seen him lying on the floor, she might not have believed it.

Pepper and House retreated to a safe distance from the open doorway, and slumped to the floor in the dark corridor.

"We've - got to do something, they're going to - torture and kill him!" she whispered urgently.

"In that suit, he's safer - than we are," House replied, managing to sound sarcastic even though he was whispering and out of breath.

"He's helpless! We need to - buy him more time."

"What do you - propose we do?"

"Talk, we could always talk," she said quickly, because that was the obvious thing to do.

Before House had time to answer her, her breath caught in her throat, and she knew she was going to cough - which would reveal them to Liu instantly, whether they wanted it to or not. She put a hand over her mouth and tried to muffle it the best she could, but the echo sounded horribly loud in the empty corridor.

The fit passed, leaving her feeling drained. They waited in silence. She still held a hand over her mouth, but now out of anxiety. There was no way that could've gone unnoticed.

Maybe a minute passed, and nothing happened. Then, she could hear Liu's voice, and Tony's answer. She could breathe again - except that she couldn't. Well, at least she could start trying again.

"So," House picked up the conversation. "If we turn ourselves in, we'll - have to make Liu think - that we don't know - about the EMP."

She hadn't even thought about that, so she was glad House had. "Yes! Tell him - that we're still desperate - to get the cure," she completed the idea. They could feed him more lies about Tony's suit, so that they'd not only buy time, but might even be able to stop him from trying anything actually harmful - it really could work.

"I would - never consider this - if I had any common sense left - but the virus must've - taken it all," House said.

"So, you're with me?"

"I'm more amazed - about it - than you are."

"Let's go, then."

"If we get killed - I'm so blaming you."

Her back against the wall, Pepper braced her heels to the floor and struggled up, slowly, to keep herself from blacking out. They covered the few yards to the doorway, and stumbled in. The moment she let go of the supporting wall, she lost her balance. She landed on the fluffy rug, not far from Liu, who was standing over Tony, holding what looked like a spray canister.

Instantly, there were a dozen guns pointed at her and House. They raised their hands in surrender.

"Hm, what's this? A rescue attempt? How cute," Liu jeered, and motioned at his guards to move closer and keep an eye on the the two of them.

"We're just attempting - to rescue ourselves," House answered him.

"We promised to cooperate - and we're still - willing to do it," Pepper added.

Pepper could hear Tony's gasp of disbelief at their words even through his helmet. She tried to wink at him, to make him understand that this was a ploy, but she was afraid he couldn't see it.


	8. "It should work"

Rhodey woke up to a whooshing sound somewhere above him, like an airplane. It disappeared almost as soon as it had begun.

The first thing he became aware of after that was a horrible headache. He felt a bit sick, too. His instant conclusion was that he'd probably been drinking with Tony. Never a good idea.

He opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness, no matter how hard he squinted. That was probably not a good sign. He also had absolutely no idea of where he was.

He was lying on his side. When he tried moving, he quickly found out that it was a lot more difficult than he'd have expected. It was like he was stuck in a shell of some sort.

There was something weird going on here - he was forgetting something important.

He rolled over to his back and looked up. Now, he could see something: a night sky, full of stars. He was looking at it through two rectangular holes in a mask.

A mask. Right. Right! He wasn't "stuck in a shell", he was wearing armor! The War Machine armor. It all came back to him in a rush. He was in China, with Tony, on a rescue mission.

"Jarvis?" he asked, but there was no answer, and the HUD was down, too. Obviously, he'd been too slow, or rather, Tony had been too fast, and the EMP had wrecked his armor.

He forced his incredibly heavy, armored arms to move, and took off his helmet to get a better view of where he was. He saw that to his left there was a steep rock face, and to the right, against his side, a large boulder or a ridge, which he'd probably collided with, even though he had no memory of falling or hitting anything.

The last thing he remembered was Tony telling him to get the hell out of the enemy base because he was going to launch an EMP, and after that, his mind was blank. He must've lost a few minutes. At least his memory felt all right aside from that. He probably had a concussion, if not something even nastier than that. He pulled off one glove and probed the side of his head. It was definitely bruised, but he didn't feel any blood. 

He sat up - the nausea and headache intensified, but they were nothing he couldn't handle. He'd faced worse. He looked down at himself, trying to survey the damage the suit had taken. As far as he could see, there wasn't any. The arc reactor it used as a power source - an exact duplicate of the one that Tony had, except that it was built into the suit instead of into his chest - seemed to be working. In its soft glow, the silvery surface of the armor looked scraped and dented and blackened, thanks to the fall and the hits he'd taken in the base, but it was all minor. He stretched out the hand that was still gloved, and tried firing the repulsor.

The recoil from the bolt almost sent him tumbling downslope again.

He put the helmet back on. The HUD blinked into life, but the image was far from clear, it was fuzzy. He wondered whether the problem was with the display or his eyesight. Probably the display, because it seemed frozen as well, the blurry readings unchanging.

"Jarvis, status report," he tried, but the AI still wasn't answering.

He put on the second gauntlet, tested it, and checked that it worked as well. Cautiously, he stood up, and ignited the bootjets. He rose a few feet into the air. "Yeah! That's more like it!" he said aloud, but instead of just flying away, he landed again, to consider his next move.

Should he head back to the enemy stronghold? If that sound he'd heard had really been Tony, that might be a pointless move. But could he be sure? With Jarvis offline, he had no way to locate Tony, or to communicate with him. His gut instinct said to follow the clue, but could he trust it? What if Tony and the others were still inside, and needed help?

  


* * *

  


"You would have me believe that you trust me more than your iron-clad savior here?" Liu asked, prodding Stark's side with the tip of his foot.

That was the challenge here, yeah, House thought. They were surrounded by enemies and had a dozen guns pointed at them. Unless they could convince Liu that they were sincere about this, they had just made things a lot worse. Now that he looked at Stark, House realized that they also needed to convince Stark that they were still on his side - otherwise, who knew what he'd do once he got the use of his suit back. Luckily, neither should be too difficult to achieve.

"He was too late," House told Liu. "You see - how sick we are. He doesn't have the cure. You do. We want to live."

Unless Stark had left his brain at home when he dashed into action, he'd figure out the truth from that. Stark knew that they knew an EMP was supposed to kill the nanovirus, and they'd already been hit with one. That should be enough to make Stark realize that they were just trying to mislead Liu. As for Liu, hopefully he'd think that House and Potts had no idea about the whole EMP thing to begin with.

Liu was still eyeing them suspiciously. "I've already got Stark at my mercy, what use could I possibly have for you?"

"For one, we could - get him out - of the suit," Potts offered.

"I can do that just as well without your help," Liu said. "But then again, it would be a beautiful thing if you were to do it instead of me. A fine example of emotional torment - being betrayed by one's friends. Go ahead and do it, if you truly can."

"We will," Potts said, and crawled closer to Stark. She stopped right next to him, staring at him with a convincingly torn expression.

"Do you see that, Iron Man?" Liu sneered. "You are alone and as good as dead, and your friends have abandoned you. Still feeling invincible?"

"You're the one who's as good as dead, Liu," Stark growled. "And my so-called friends can go to hell with you." That was very convincing, too, House thought. He could only hope it wasn't genuine. Stark had to realize they were faking this, hadn't he?

"Okay..." Potts muttered. "Voice authorization: Pepper Potts. Suit, open."

All right, if Stark hadn't figured out the truth before, that should've made it obvious. Nothing happened, since as all three of them well knew, that was no way to open the suit. Potts had lied to Liu earlier that it was voice controlled, and House had to give her credit for sticking to that story.

"What sort of an act is this, Miss Potts? Nothing's happening," Liu said.

"I... I don't understand," she answered. "It should work." She knelt even closer and repeated her earlier command, but of course, it still didn't do anything.

"Hah!" Stark exclaimed, playing along.

"He must've - locked me out," Potts said, shaking her head.

"Let me," House said, casting a glance at the guards around him. Liu nodded at them and him in approval, and he made his way to Stark's side as well. He crouched close, his face inches from the helmet, as if trying to read something from its side.

"Hm. It's obvious," House said, as he sat up straight again. "It won't work - because his - suit computer isn't on. We'll just have to - open it manually."

"Of course," Potts said.

House looked up at Liu. "We'll need - a power drill - or at least a screwdriver."

"I grow tired of this. Either you're lying or you're complete fools - probably both. Whichever the case, you're growing less and less amusing by the minute. I'll get you what you ask for, but that'll be your last chance. After that, I'll have you executed, and begin testing more interesting things."

Liu pointed at a few of his guards, and gave them orders in Mandarin Chinese. House understood enough to figure out that he was sending them to fetch not just the tools House had mentioned, but also a blowtorch and a laser cutter. This wasn't looking good.

"Executing us - won't be - a smart move," House said, just to keep Liu occupied, and to delay the inevitable, if possible. "I could be useful to you. As a doctor."

"Hm, you could, indeed," Liu said thoughtfully. "On the other hand, I can't really trust you, and you are extremely annoying."

"You got that one right," Stark muttered.

"I could - help you - take over Stark Industries," Potts tried, in turn.

"A tempting offer, Miss Potts, but a completely unrealistic one, don't you think, Mr. Stark?"

"Yeah. Still, I'd keep them if I were you. They're good at what they do."

"They've betrayed you, but you still stand up for them?"

"That's the difference between us good guys and you bad guys. We don't just randomly kill people because they annoy us."

"How naive you are, Mr. Stark. Good and bad are a matter of opinion," Liu said. "But perhaps I'll keep them around for a little longer - the nanovirus will kill them soon, anyway."

After several minutes of anxious waiting and useless talking, they could hear the footsteps of the returning guards. House was staring at the door gloomily, when he felt a strong hand grab his wrist. He turned his head slowly, to avoid drawing attention. As he looked down, he saw that the eyes in Stark's mask had lit up.

  


* * *

  


Tony couldn't believe his ears when he heard Pepper and House stumble into the room and announce that they were on Liu's side. No way. They would never do that. Sure enough, from what they said, it didn't take him long to realize what they were really up to. They were buying him time. They'd suddenly gone from rescuees to rescuers. Even though they were so sick they could barely stay upright, they were still doing their damnedest to help him. He felt like cheering aloud at their sheer nerve and courage, but, of course, he had to play along and pretend he was taken aback by their apparent betrayal. He could see Pepper doing something as amazing as this - this was yet more proof that she was the most incredible woman he'd ever met - but House? Tony couldn't imagine how she'd forced him into putting himself at risk like this.

He'd been expecting Rhodey to show up, rather than the captives they'd been trying to save. He wondered what had happened to War Machine. It was possible that he hadn't gotten away in time, and had been hit by the EMP, too. Then again, Tony was pretty sure that had Rhodey fallen inside the base, Liu's cronies would've dragged him here. Since there had been no sign of him, it was more likely that he'd gotten out. If he'd been hit by the EMP, his suit should restart sooner or later, too. 

Damn it, he never should've let Rhodey come here with him in the first place. Right now, all he could do was hope Rhodey was all right. They'd have to get out of this mess before they could start worrying about him. 

No matter how amazing Pepper and House were, they couldn't keep Liu distracted forever. When Liu announced that he'd execute them if they failed to get Tony out of the suit, he did his best to talk him out of it, to convince him to let them live. What surprised Tony was that Liu kept insisting that they still had the nanovirus. Was it possible that he didn't know about the EMP's effect on it? Or even worse, could this new version be resistant to it? That was a thought too horrible to consider. Of course, the most likely explanation was that Liu was just keeping the fact from Pepper and House because it gave him leverage over them.

"Sir," a soft voice spoke in his ear. Luckily, the suit covered his jolt of surprise at it.

"Jarvis," he whispered, careful to keep his voice so low that no one else would hear it. "About time. Status?"

"Could be better, sir." The HUD flickered to life, showing that half the systems still weren't working - but he had flight, and he had the repulsors. So far, there were no signs of any effects from the stuff Liu had sprayed him with.

He'd need to be careful here. Simply breaking himself out would've been a piece of cake, but now he had two sick, unprotected people with him, in a room full of goons with guns.

He waited until the return of the guards Liu had sent on an errand. At least some of the people in the room would turn their attention to the door once they arrived. As he heard the approaching footfalls, he reached to grab both Pepper and House's hands. He saw them look at him and realize that he'd finally regained the use of his armor.

"Stay low," he told them. As they ducked to the floor, he flashed into action.

In a movement as fluid as possible, he broke his chains, turned over and placed himself protectively over House and Pepper. Bullets started raining on them. From such a close distance, he could feel them battering his suit, denting it, but he also heard and saw several of the guards get hit by friendly fire in the confined space. It was complete chaos. He pointed his hands out to his sides and shot in all directions, pretty much at random, since his targeting system was still offline. He couldn't see Liu anymore. Damn, he really needed to get that bastard - but he had his priorities. Liu would have to wait. They needed to get out of here.

He grabbed Pepper and House with one arm each, told them to "Hang on!" and activated his bootjets. They zoomed out of the room. Some of the guards ran after them, still shooting, but there was no way they could keep up with the suit.

The steering was barely functioning. Tony did his best, flying through the corridors as fast as he could, with Pepper and House clinging desperately to him. Soon, the sounds of their pursuers were far behind, but he didn't stop, just went on, even when the HUD started filling with error messages, which he didn't bother to read.

When they reached the exit, he landed for a short while, to make sure they'd all survived the reckless escape run. Miraculously, they had - no major injuries as far as he could see. He switched his passengers into a more comfortable position, and took off into the night. He flew low over the ground, because by now, the warnings made it obvious that his suit was practically falling apart.

  


* * *

  


The triumph and joy Pepper felt when she saw Tony's armor come back online quickly gave way to fear when the room turned into a battle zone, and Tony grabbed her and House and bolted into the corridor. It was all she could do to hang on to the cold, hard metal of his suit, one hand over his shoulder, the other clutching the arm he'd put around her waist, with one leg wrapped around the suit's thigh.

The situation was so hectic that, for the first time in a few days, she wasn't feeling sick, simply because she had no time to think about it when everything else was so overwhelming. She couldn't see anything, the tunnels were still pitch-dark, but apparently Tony knew where they were going, since he took each sudden turn with such speed that it made her stomach lurch. The noise of gunfire kept growing more and more distant, leaving nothing but the rushing of wind in her ears.

They stopped in front of a doorway opening into the night, into a darkness far friendlier than that inside the base, lit up softly by the stars and moon in the clear sky above. Below them, she saw a valley between tall mountains. This, she thought, was exactly what freedom looked like. It was a beautiful view, but unfortunately, they had no time to stay and stare at it.

Tony had her and House grab his shoulders, so that they'd rest on his back when he was horizontal. She and House had to put their arms around each other's backs to keep themselves in place, and they were pressed very close to each other, but in these circumstances, she really didn't care. They took off, flying again at a dizzying speed, low over the side of the mountain, across a valley, through a narrow pass into another valley, and a third one.

All of a sudden, the steady rumble of Tony's bootjets stopped.

They were only some ten feet above the ground, but that didn't make falling any less scary. Again, there was nothing she could do but cling to Tony with every ounce of strength she had left. She let go just before they hit the valley floor, to keep her hands from getting crushed between the suit and the ground.

Since she and House were on Tony's back, he took the brunt of the impact. She was flung away from him, and rolled around a few times on the grassy ground before coming to a stop.

"Pepper? Pepper!" Tony called out.

"I'm okay," she breathed, though she wasn't entirely sure about it yet.

"House?"

"I hurt, therefore I am."

Everyone was still all right. Or, at least as all right as was possible, given the circumstances.

For a minute or so, she just lay there on her back, staring at the starry sky whirling nauseatingly above her, doing her best to catch her breath, waiting for her racing heart to settle, though there was little hope of either of those happening any time soon. She was again starting to register how awful she felt - but she also realized that she wasn't feeling any worse, except for a collection of bumps and bruises. Breathing was difficult, but not more so than before. Maybe the EMP really had done the trick.

She rolled over to her side, facing the direction where she figured the others would be. As always, Tony was easy to spot, thanks to the ever-present light in his chest. He was sitting up, and by the looks of it, stripping off his armor.

She did a double take and had to squint and lift her hand to rub her eyes to make sure she was really seeing what she thought she was: he was tearing off pieces of his suit just like that, with his bare hands. He'd already taken off his helmet and most of the plates that'd covered his upper body.

Guessing that standing up wouldn't be a good idea, Pepper made her way to him on all fours. "What - how can you - how's that possible?" she asked him, perplexed.

"Liu hit me with a metal-eating nano-thing of some sort. If you're up to it, I could use a hand here," he said, and reached towards her with an arm that was still covered in armor from the wrist up.

She grabbed at his forearm with both hands, digging her fingers into seams in the metal, and pulled. A large panel of it came off, just like that. In the dim light, she thought the surface of it looked wrong, dull and streaked with something, like rust, or mold. She held it between her hands and tried twisting it. It bent like rubber, and finally snapped in half with a soft crack.


	9. "What's wrong with him?"

During the last few days, House had felt more than once that he'd reached the end of his rope, but there was always more to come. And here he was, once again, thinking it couldn't possibly get any worse: lying on the damp ground, gasping for breath, one hand clenching his thigh in a death grip.

Stark and Potts had been going on about the Iron Man armor and whatever Liu had done to it, and now they were discussing Stark's friend Rhodes, who had apparently been with Stark in a suit similar to his. House couldn't have cared less. He was already dreading the moment when the two of them would get all mushy and declare their undying love for each other and start sucking at each other's faces. It would come sooner or later, there was no helping it.

Maybe he'd better remind them of his presence, to delay the inevitable at least a bit. "Hey, Mr. Superhero Man, what's the plan of action?" he called out.

"Well, Stupendous Superdoc, my extremely cunning plan can be summarized with two words: we walk."

"You could summarize that - with just 'walking' - and you'd have it in one word, genius. And that's your master plan? You expect two people - with clearly compromised cardiopulmonary functions - to go do a marathon across the mountains?" House sneered. The coughing fit that followed his words underlined them nicely.

"We're not that far from civilization. If you had the backbone to get up, you would've already noticed the lights at the far end of the valley. There's people living here. I reckon it'll take us about an hour to cross the distance. I'll escort the two of you there, and then I'll come back to look for Rhodey, and to pick up what remains of my suit."

Gritting his teeth together, House pushed himself to a seated position and looked around. The stars and Stark's chestpiece gave enough light that he could get an idea of the surroundings. They were lying on a meadow at the edge of a valley. A rugged dirt road ran through it, apparently all the way to the base where they'd come from. Further down, there was more vegetation, some bushes and trees and, just like Stark had said, there were lights at the other end of the valley. Only a few of them, probably a small, isolated village.

Stark and Potts had already stood up, and they walked over to where House was, she leaning heavily on him. Since Stark had stripped off all his armor, he was now wearing only the dark undersuit.

"Sorry, Stark - even spandex doesn't make you look - like a real superhero," House told him, struggling to his feet.

"It's not spandex. Besides, I bet a white coat wouldn't make you look like a real doctor, either," Stark commented.

"Why would I want to look - like a doctor? If I did, everyone would just come to me - complaining about how sick they are."

"So, instead, we have you complaining about how sick you are, which is a whole lot better," Stark said, and offered House his hand. House took it, because it was the rational thing to do.

"Oh, shut up, both of you!" Potts cried out. "I'm too tired - to listen to you two - doing that insult swordfighting thing again!"

"Insult swordfighting?" Stark repeated, sounding impressed. "Pepper, I had no idea you even played computer games, let alone classics like Monkey Island!"

"Potts is full of surprises - I can tell you that - after the days we spent together - and the sex was great, too," House quipped.

Stark let go of House's hand. He lost his balance and fell back to the ground, jarring his leg painfully in the process, but oh, the look on Stark's face! That had been completely worth it.

Potts groaned wordlessly, let go of Stark and started staggering away from the two of them, towards the signs of civilization.

"Pepper, wait!" Stark yelled, caught up with her in a few quick strides and gave her his arm again. "I know he was just pushing my buttons, I would never really believe something like that."

"Of course you wouldn't," Potts answered.

"Hey, I'm still on the ground," House called out after them. Sure, he could've gotten up on his own, maybe even taken a few steps to join the other two, but this was more fun.

"We could just leave him there, couldn't we?" Stark asked Potts in a low voice.

"I heard that," House commented.

"No, we can't just leave him," Potts said. "Let's go help him up - and then, can we please cut the bickering - and get going?"

The cutesy couple turned around and started walking towards House, Potts with an arm around Stark's shoulders. As he looked at them, House noticed something that was slightly off. A symptom! He felt instantly more curious about whatever Liu had done to Stark.

"Stark," House said, and pointed at the arc reactor. "That little light of yours is usually brighter than that, isn't it?"

  


* * *

  


It took Tony a few seconds to realize what House was saying, and that he wasn't just poking more fun at him.

He looked down. House was right. The arc reactor's light looked noticeably dimmer. Tony didn't think it was failing, he would've felt that. He ran his thumb over it. A part of the surface felt wrong - not hard and metallic, but grainy, like it was covered with dust. Just the way his armor had been when he'd stripped it off. That was why the light looked different: it was partially clouded.

"Shit."

His subconscious working faster than his conscious mind, he took hold of the device, twisted, and yanked it out of his chest, unplugging it in one swift move.

"Tony! Wait, no, stop!" Pepper cried out, and grabbed his forearm tightly, as if trying to force him to reverse the gesture.

He held the glowing chestpiece at an arm's distance, staring at it with wide eyes, just as shocked as she was at what he'd done.

"No, Potts, I think Stark's got a point," House said from where he was sitting.

"Tony?" Pepper said, in a slightly shaky voice.

He had a point, yes, and now that the rest of his mind had caught up with the fast-acting undercurrent, he knew what it was, too. "The chestpiece is something that can be replaced with another power source of some sort, but if this spreads to the base plate, I'm done for. And this is the only sure way I can prevent it from spreading any further," he explained. "If it already has, then..."

Then that would be it, there would be nothing they could do. End of story. Liu would win. Not that it wasn't the most likely outcome anyway - they had a very short window of opportunity for finding a replacement, and he couldn't see any realistic way for them to succeed in it.

"But... How long can you last without it?" Pepper asked, her fingers squeezing his arm so tightly it was starting to hurt.

House had struggled to his feet, and he took an awkward step towards them. "We don't know for sure, because there's been no way to test it without harming him," he answered Pepper's question. Tony nodded to let her know that House knew what he was talking about. "It's likely that his heart will stop before the shrapnel has moved enough to cause new, serious damage."

"I'd say fifteen minutes, tops, before I pass out," Tony added, doing his best to keep his voice casual. He wasn't feeling anything yet, just a slight tightness about his chest that was often there even in normal circumstances.

"Come on, there's no time to waste," House said, and placed a hand on Tony's shoulder to keep himself upright. "The chances are that the people living out there have something you can use for batteries."

Pepper finally let go of Tony's forearm, and snatched the unusable, contaminated arc reactor from him. "It's going to be all right," she told him, and put her arm around his waist. "We'll fix it. We're all going to make it. We've come this far already."

Tony gave both her and House an arm, and they started stumbling forwards. It was hard to imagine how they could've been any more pathetic and miserable than this - a few minutes of walking, and they were all gasping for breath, all swaying on their feet, only just able to keep each other upright. By the feel of it, his heart was trying to do somersaults in his chest. He'd estimated earlier that the settlement was an hour's walk away. He knew for a fact that he hadn't got that long.

Well, it could be worse than this, he thought, when his knees gave in under the weight of the two people leaning on him, the pain, and the dizziness. At least he had Pepper by his side.

  


* * *

  


A thing as simple as walking was almost more than Pepper could take right now, and no matter how she hated putting any extra stress on Tony, she had no choice but to lean on him. She knew House was doing the same. They'd already stretched themselves beyond what she'd have thought possible when they'd made their way through the tunnels in the base, and tried to distract Liu.

Once Tony lost his balance, all three of them fell.

"Damn," he cursed breathlessly. "Sorry about that."

He tried to get up again, only to collapse to the ground for a second time. "Damn," he repeated.

House grabbed Tony's wrist, held it for a while, frowned, and moved his hand to Tony's neck. He shook his head. "I've no idea how you were still on your feet, let alone supporting the two of us, when I can't even get a radial pulse. That's got to count as a superpower. I can tell you for sure that if you keep trying to get up, you're just going to faint."

Tony sighed in resignation. "I guess this is it, then."

"Don't say that!" Pepper told him, and moved closer to him, cradling him in her lap. He was trembling slightly, all his muscles tense.

She held out the hand in which she was still clutching the detached arc reactor. If they could just plug it back in temporarily - but they couldn't. She realized that her fingers had actually left dents in the metal. As she looked at the device, the glow flickered and went out. She let her hand droop, and dropped the reactor on the ground.

"That's not going to explode, is it?" House asked.

"It would've already, if it was going to," Tony answered wearily.

Pepper glanced at the lights at the other side of the valley towards which they'd been walking. It didn't look like they were any nearer than before.

"Maybe I could walk over there, to fetch help," she suggested.

"You, walk, on your own? In what fantasy world do you live, Potts?" House said. "Besides, even if you could, it'd still be too slow. You'd have to go there and back again in less than five minutes."

"All right, all right, I get it," she told him angrily, her breath catching in her throat as she raised her voice. "If you've got - nothing constructive to say - just shut up and leave us be."

"Okay, I'll close my eyes, put my hands over my ears, and hum really loud. Just let me know when the sentimental stuff's over."

"Don't worry, won't take long now," Tony mumbled. His breathing had slowed down slightly, but it had also turned shallow. Even though he wasn't the type to give up easily, there was hardly any point in fighting, when there was no hope left.

"Tony, I..." Pepper began, running her fingers through his damp hair.

"Pepper, you already told me - the last time I was dying - but it lead to nothing," Tony said, sounding like he was barely able to speak anymore. "If you don't mean it, I don't want to hear it."

"Tony, shush," she said, and moved over so that she could hold him in a proper hug.

House was saying something in the background, but she ignored him. It couldn't be anything important. She wasn't going to waste Tony's last moments listening to that insensitive idiot.

She pulled Tony close and pressed her mouth over his. It probably wasn't much of a kiss by his standards, both their lips were cracked and dry, and she simply had no strength to make it a very passionate one. Seeing as they were both having more or less trouble breathing, she also couldn't sustain it for very long.

As she withdrew, he slumped limply against her. His eyes were closed, and she couldn't hear his breathing anymore.

"Tony?"

She placed a hand on his chest, just below the empty socket, but she couldn't feel a thing, not the faintest sign of life.

After all they'd been through, after all they'd both done to help each other, he was gone, just like that. Nothing, no sickness, no worry, no fear that she'd endured during the last few days could even begin to compare to what she felt now.

  


* * *

  


With Jarvis offline, Rhodey had no navigation. Instead, he took the suit high above the mountains and checked the view. Once he got high enough, he could actually see the level ground beyond the mountain range, and the distant lights of a city. That was where Tony would've gone, if everything was all right. If everything wasn't all right, then he might be anywhere in the mountains, with or without Pepper and House, and spotting them would be difficult in the dark and without the advantage the HUD would've normally given.

Rhodey descended near to where he'd come from. He'd fly slow and close to the ground, just in case. He could take the time, it wasn't as if he was in a hurry. If Tony had already left the mountains, he would probably come back for Rhodey. At the least, he'd wait at their rendezvous point, at the airport where the jet was. Rhodey was pretty sure he could find his way there even without Jarvis. An airport was easy to spot from the air, after all.

He flew through a mountain pass, into one valley, through that and into another one. There, he spotted a tiny, bright light on the ground, not far from him. Of course, his first thought was that it was Tony's arc reactor. As he looked, it disappeared from view, but it had been enough to give him a clue of where they were. Rhodey headed towards that spot as fast as he could.

When he got nearer, he could make out three figures, all of them sitting on the ground. House was staring straight at him, waving his hands in the air, to catch his attention, for what little good the gesture did in the dark. Pepper and Tony didn't even seem to have noticed his approach. They weren't looking his way, they were unmoving and caught in a somewhat awkward-looking hug - awkward, because it seemed like Pepper was supporting all of Tony's weight. It was weird considering the fact that it was Pepper who was supposed to be sick.

Pepper only looked up at Rhodey when he touched down right next to them. Tony didn't as much as turn his head. He was way too still.

Rhodey took off his pretty much useless helmet and stepped closer to his friends.

"Rhodey," Pepper greeted him, her voice barely above a whisper and heavy with emotion.

"I told you I could see him, but did you listen? Oh, no, you just had to have your larger-than-life, tear-jerking, schmaltzy moment," House muttered from where he was sitting.

"Pepper, what's going on? Is everyone all right?"

She shook her head slightly, and buried a hand in Tony's hair - his head was resting against her shoulder.

"What's wrong with him?"

"His..." Pepper looked at Rhodey, and he could see her gaze settle on the War Machine armor's arc reactor. "Rhodey!" she exclaimed, her eyes wide. "Is that like the one Tony has?"

"Yeah, it is," Rhodey nodded. "It's an exact duplicate, just in case he should need a backup... Damn! That's what's wrong? What the hell's happened to him?"

Pepper didn't waste time explaining. "Get it out, quick," she told him, and lowered Tony gently to the ground. Rhodey could see that there was nothing but a gaping hole in his chest where the reactor should've been.

He pulled off his gauntlets and, with hands that suddenly felt incredibly clumsy, fingered the front of the suit, fumbling for the locks that would release his suit's chestpiece. It only took seconds, but it felt like a small eternity. Rhodey had no idea how long Tony had been without the device - was he too late already?

He handed the glowing arc reactor to Pepper, who instantly turned to Tony, and without hesitation, with movements that clearly told she had done this before, attached it to its proper place.

Still, as far as Rhodey could see, there was no change. Tony looked just as lifeless as before. Pepper rested a hand on his chest, the loss and desperation on her face clear in the soft light of the reactor.

"Oh, move aside, Potts," House told her, sounding as sardonic as ever. He pushed her aside to take her place by Tony's side. "This calls for doctorly stuff."

He checked the pulse at Tony's neck, and without telling what he had or hadn't found, with no word of explanation, balled his hand into a fist and struck Tony in the chest, right below the arc reactor.

Tony drew in a sharp breath, coughed a few times, and went on breathing.

"Don't try that at home," House said. "Almost never works. I've told him - he needs an inbuilt defibrillator - in that device, but noo, he's too busy designing things - that'll get him into trouble - to waste time on anything - that might get him out of it."

"Ugh, that's not a voice I'd like to wake up to," Tony mumbled sleepily. "Quit whining, House, or I'll cut down your salary."

"You owe me a bonus, actually. I just saved your life," House said.

"Hey, you don't get all the credit, doc. It took all three of us," Rhodey noted.

Tony opened his eyes, and stared at the three people grouped around him, his gaze going from House to Pepper to Rhodey. He brought his hand to the replacement arc reactor in his chest, tapped at it with his fingers, and went on to rub at the spot below it, where House had hit him.

"Not bad, guys," he said appreciatively. Coming from him, Rhodey knew that was about the highest praise they could get.

"Teamwork, Tony," Rhodey said. "I told you it's a good idea."


	10. "Rise and shine, people, the cavalry is here!"

Even though Rhodey, Pepper and House teamed up to insist that Tony should rest at least a moment after his close call, nothing they said could force him to stay put.

"Sorry, guys, but I'm not sick, Pepper and House are, and we're still lost in the middle of nowhere. We need to get moving," Tony said, and stood up, swaying only slightly.

Naturally, he offered his arm to Pepper, so Rhodey was stuck supporting House. Rhodey was also still wearing the War Machine armor, which was nothing but a useless weight now that Tony had its power source. Rhodey suggested he could hand over the armor to Tony, or abandon it altogether, but Tony shot down both ideas. He'd left his damaged armor lying on the ground, and discarding an intact one to go with it would be incredibly careless. As for Tony wearing the suit instead, he noted that if there was any of the metal-eating stuff on him, it might spread. Even though he didn't say it aloud, Rhodey also got it from that that Tony might still not be out of danger. All they could do was hope for the best.

So, Rhodey had to drag along both a constantly grumbling House and the extremely cumbersome armor. Together with a nasty headache that refused to go away, he didn't exactly enjoy the situation, but compared to everyone else in the group, he'd had it easy, so he wasn't going to complain. Mostly because of him, they were moving at a snail's pace, and the trip across the valley seemed to last forever. Soon, both House and Pepper were so exhausted that Rhodey and Tony were half-carrying them.

By the time they reached the edge of the small village, the sky had begun to lighten. Rhodey could make out a dozen houses or huts of different sizes, grouped to the right of the dirt road. As the four of them approached the nearest building, they were greeted by two anxiously barking dogs, which forced them to stop on their tracks.

Rhodey glanced at the others and couldn't help grinning. House was standing on one foot, with all his weight resting on Rhodey, wearing a pained frown. Pepper's head was on Tony's shoulder, and he had his arm protectively around her. Her face looked white in the early morning light, her eyes sunken. Despite his earlier reassurances that he was fine now, Tony looked paler than usual as well. After all they'd been through, being held back by a few dogs felt nothing short of ridiculous.

A man emerged from the nearest hut, and walked over to see what had set the dogs in a rage. The utterly bewildered expression on his face made Rhodey's grin even wider. He looked like the stereotype of a Chinese farmer from some old movie, all he lacked was the rice hat.

The villager said a few stern words, which of course Rhodey couldn't understand. To his surprise, House answered in a language that at least sounded similar. The man frowned at House, and walked away, leaving the dogs to guard the four of them.

"You speak Chinese?" Rhodey asked House.

"No, I'm spouting random gibberish, just for fun," House sneered. "Anyway, it might not do us much good. I only know one variety - and it's not the right one."

The man returned a moment later, accompanied by an old woman, who addressed them in a hesitant voice.

House frowned as he translated it. "She wants to know if the mandarin sent us."

"What's a mandarin?" Pepper asked.

"Aside from the name of the language we're speaking, it's among other things a fruit, a duck, and an ancient Chinese bureaucrat," House answered them, and then said a few words in Chinese to the woman. 

She seemed content with his reply - Rhodey assumed it had been "no". The man called away the dogs, and the two of them motioned at the village and began leading the four foreigners deeper into it.

  


* * *

  


The friendly locals took the four of them to a hut, where the old woman brought a few straw mattresses. Pepper landed heavily on one of them, incredibly relieved to be finally able to get horizontal. She had never been this exhausted in her entire life. Tony sat down next to her, brushing off stray locks from her forehead.

"You said it yourself, Pepper: we're all going to make it. Everything's going to be all right. You can rest now, we're safe, we're not in a hurry anymore," he said softly. She didn't think she'd ever heard him sound this gentle, his voice so completely devoid of wit and irony.

She knew they really, really needed to talk, but she was so very tired that she couldn't even keep her eyes open anymore, let alone start a serious conversation.

"I need to go and take care of the Iron Man armor, I can't just leave it lying around. By now, I think I can be pretty sure that there's none of the nano-stuff left on me, so I'm going to borrow Rhodey's suit," Tony said, caressing her hair soothingly. "Won't take long. I'll be back before you know it."

She forced her heavy eyelids apart. Both her gaze and her hand sought out the light of the arc reactor on his chest. The metal felt smooth under her fingers, solid, just the way it should be. "Tony, please be careful," she told him.

He took hold of her fingers and lifted her hand closer to his face, to kiss it lightly. "Don't worry, I've had enough excitement for one day. Good night, Miss Potts."

She smirked. That sounded more like his usual style - it was beyond her ability to explain how he could say her name so that it was entirely official, teasing, and tender at the same time.

"Good night, Mr. Stark," she answered. He walked away on tiptoe.

She was mildly surprised that House didn't comment on their exchange at all, but considering how loudly he was snoring, he had probably fallen asleep already. She quickly followed suit.

  


* * *

  


Tony had never been a nostalgic, but still, he loved his toys dearly, and blasting apart the remains of his latest armor was nothing short of painful. He didn't even land to do it, simply took the War Machine suit close enough that he could get a decent shot, and fired the repulsors at the red-and-gold fragments until there was nothing left but a smoldering clump. That would stop anyone from getting any data from it, and hopefully also kill the nano-bug.

They'd kept the most dangerous, most secret part of his suit, the old arc reactor, with them all the time. It was at the village now, by Pepper's bed, wrapped tightly in several layers of oilcloth. During their trip across the valley, Tony had needed a lot of restraint not to poke neurotically at the new reactor all the time, to make sure it was still unharmed. Even though Liu's mysterious metal-eating bug didn't seem to spread by touch, there was no need to take unnecessary risks. Now, Tony was finally starting to believe that he was out of the woods. He needed to take the damaged arc reactor home to figure out how the bug worked, so he could protect himself from anything like this happening again.

Getting home was the next big thing on his list. He couldn't carry everyone with one suit, and the only other means of transportation at hand were ox-drawn carts. He'd rather take something faster, if he could arrange it.

Once Tony had gotten back to the village and out of the suit with Rhodey's help, he grabbed the helmet, and opened the panel in its side to reveal most of the communications tech. It was a complete mess. No way he could make any of it work without some spare parts.

He couldn't help but feel slightly cruel as he stepped into their hut to wake House up. After all, it was Tony's fault that House had been kidnapped in the first place, and he had probably had the hardest time of them all, what with his bad leg and Vicodin habit. Of course, Tony's freak lapse into empathy towards House only lasted until the doctor woke up and opened his mouth.

"One would think a genius of your caliber could come up with enough sign language to achieve something as simple as this," House commented, as Tony explained what he needed. Nevertheless, he did what Tony had asked, and talked to the old local woman who was something like their hostess. She left, and he went back to sleep.

A few minutes later, she returned with a haphazard collection of tools, a positively ancient radio, and a slightly newer cell phone. "I hope House told you I'll pay for what I use," Tony said. She stared at him, not understanding a single word. Since she didn't start complaining when he sat down in front of the hut and began taking the things apart, he figured out it was all right.

With a bit of creativity, Tony soon had the suit's radio in working order again, with improvised manual controls added.

"You might want to check out S.H.I.E.L.D.'s frequencies," Rhodey suggested.

"Huh, why would I do that? They refused to help us, they're supposed to be at home, sitting on their asses, not giving a damn."

"Just a hunch."

Tony shrugged. It was as good an idea as any - he'd been going to contact the crew of his jet first, but it was a fact that his staff had no quick, easy way to get them out of here. He adjusted the frequency, and the moment he reached the one he'd been looking for, the radio crackled to life.

"Iron Man, War Machine, this is Sitwell, if you can hear me, please respond!"

When Tony didn't answer it, Rhodey reached for the transmit button. "Sitwell, this is War Machine, we copy. We're all here, and we're safe. Over."

"War Machine, that's great news! We've got your position and we're on our way."

Tony glared at Rhodey, feeling more vexed than happy about this turn of events. "What the hell are they doing here, and how did you know about it? Is there something you haven't been telling me?"

Rhodey grimaced. "I honestly didn't know they were here and looking for us. I did know Fury was worried you'd do something irrational, he even asked me to keep an eye on you, so I suspected he might have someone nearby. But Tony," Rhodey held out a hand, forefinger raised, to keep him from interrupting. "Before you start chewing me out for not mentioning this to you, how about you consider the stuff you didn't tell me. The EMP ring a bell?"

"That was differ-"

"Yeah, it was definitely different - it was worse. It jeopardized the entire operation," Rhodey said sharply. "You can't withhold important tactical information from your team like that. That's no way to protect your friends, it's the exact opposite!"

"Damn it, Rhodey, you were spying on me!" Tony shouted, ignoring Rhodey's accusations.

"I was not spying on you, I was asked to prevent you from starting a war with all of China, which is something I would've done anyway. You, on the other hand, almost got us all killed because we didn't plan the EMP strike properly!"

"You would never have let me do it if you'd known how risky it was - and I didn't even want you here in the first place, you forced me to take you with me!"

"Oh yeah, I did, and don't expect me to regret it! If I hadn't been around, you'd be dead now. Tony, you need to start trusting the people around you again. Not everyone is like Obadiah Stane."

Tony could see it on Rhodey's face the moment he'd said the last two words that he was afraid he'd stepped out of line. Sure, that name felt like a slap in the face, and Tony's first idea was to stand up and walk out of the conversation, but he stayed, and considered it.

The truth was, Rhodey was right. In addition to his need to protect his friends, Tony still felt like he could never be entirely certain about them, not even people as close to him as Rhodey or Happy. Pepper was probably the only exception to that rule. That was why he felt so hurt that Rhodey hadn't told him about Fury. Maybe, just maybe, that was also a part of why he'd kept his plan to himself. And no matter what Tony's exact, deep-down motivations might have been, Rhodey was right. Tony had been stupid not to tell him about the EMP.

He held out his hand. "So, you didn't tell me, I didn't tell you. Let's just say we're even, shall we?"

Rhodey contemplated him for a while before accepting it. "I won't say what you did was all right, I'll say I let it go this time. There'd better not be a next time," he declared, and shook Tony's hand.

  


* * *

  


Pepper woke up to Rhodey shouting "Rise and shine, people, the cavalry is here!"

She squinted drowsily at his grinning face. She could hear the familiar noise of a helicopter, so loud that it had to be quite near. A moment later, Tony entered the hut with a young man she didn't think she had met before. He was quick to introduce himself: "Special Agent Sitwell, S.H.I.E.L.D. Glad to see you're all right, Miss Potts."

House was awake, too, and had sat up in his bed. Sitwell turned towards him. "Oh, and you must be Doctor House!" He spent a moment rummaging the numerous pockets of his tactical vest, and finally produced a pill bottle, which he tossed to House. "Your friend Wilson says 'hi'."

House caught the bottle, checked the label and grinned - an expression so happy that Pepper had never seen anything like it on his face. "I just love that man," he said. He popped the lid open and dry swallowed a pill right away.

"Come on, the chopper's waiting to take us to the airport." Sitwell motioned towards the door.

Once again leaning heavily on Tony, Pepper followed the others to the waiting helicopter. Feeling like she was still dreaming, she stared out of the window as the village grew smaller and smaller below them. Soon, they were out of the valley altogether. With each passing minute, they were putting more distance between themselves and Liu's stronghold. They were actually, finally on their way home. It was something so amazing that she still couldn't quite grasp it. She drifted to sleep with her forehead resting against the transparent plastic.

The next time she came to was to Tony shaking her shoulder ever so gently. "Come on, time to change rides, sleeping beauty. That's an exact, literal description, by the way - except for the part where I'd need to kiss you to wake you, because, well, I'd love to, but I'm not entirely sure it would be a good idea."

She blinked at him, confused, but took his hand when he offered it to her and let him lead her out of the helicopter, across a stretch of tarmac to a plane. It wasn't his private jet, but a larger one, probably S.H.I.E.L.D.'s. There were quite a few people inside it, none of whom were introduced to her, and Tony and Sitwell and Rhodey had several conversations, which she didn't quite follow - among other things, they were making flight plans and discussing what had happened. House was nowhere to be seen. Eventually, Pepper was guided to a gurney. She fell asleep almost the minute her head hit the pillow.

When she came around again, it was without any apparent reason. Maybe it was because she had finally rested enough. At least she felt a lot less tired.

Once she had opened her eyes, for a minute or two she was convinced she was in the hospital. She was hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, there was a blood pressure cuff around her arm and those extra oxygen tube things in her nostrils. After a while, she figured out that she was actually still in the plane.

Tony was sitting by her bedside, nodding off. His arm rested right next to hers, not quite touching it.  
She grasped his hand, and his head snapped up instantly.

"Hey," he said, smiling at her. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah," she replied, and returned his smile. "This seems a bit unnecessary," she gestured at the medical paraphernalia around her.

He shrugged. "Well, safety measures, you know. They were worried, I was worried. You have been pretty sick, after all. The S.H.I.E.L.D. medics had a hard time believing us when we told them how active you and House were through the entire operation. But you're getting better, and they said that if there aren't any dramatic changes, there's no need for you to go to a hospital once we're home."

"What about you?" Pepper asked, glancing at his chest, but he was now wearing a loose black t-shirt, which was thick enough to cover his arc reactor completely.

"Me?" Tony frowned, actually looking surprised at the question. "I'm the only one of us four who's completely healthy - well, as healthy as I'll ever be, anyway. Rhodey got himself a concussion. Not nearly as dramatic as your nanovirus, but they prescribed him the same as you: lots of rest."

"But you need to have them take a look at you, too, just to be sure!" She gave his hand a squeeze.

He brought his other hand to cover hers, clasping it reassuringly between both his hands. "I already did, and I'm not about to drop dead at random. You can stop worrying about me and concentrate on getting better yourself. Take as much time as you need - a month off, or two, if you feel like it."

Those words somehow finally made her truly, concretely realize that they were going home. That this incident, or whatever she should call it, was all over, and things would be returning back to normal. It was an extremely strange idea.

The thought of a month-long convalescence, of sitting at home, alone, with occasional visits from friends and relatives, was somehow nearly more than she could handle. It didn't make her feel relieved or happy, but troubled, almost panicky. Not to mention that thinking about her front gate and yard instantly brought to mind that horrible moment when she'd been kidnapped.

"I don't know..." she mumbled. "Definitely not two months."

"You know, Pepper - don't take this the wrong way, it's just a thought, entirely unofficial - but anyway, you could always stay at the mansion, if you'd like. There are plenty of guest rooms, after all. I could hire a full-time housekeeper, so you wouldn't need to worry about cleaning and food and all that stuff."

"I, well, I'm..." Pepper stuttered. Yes, she would like that. No, she didn't think it was a good idea. Then again, they weren't talking about her moving over to his place, or about sleeping together, or starting a relationship. It wouldn't be the first time she'd stayed overnight in one of the guest rooms. It would be nice not to be alone, and she'd be able to get back to work as soon as she felt like it. She'd also feel a lot safer - at least as long as she could be sure that he was safe, too.

"Yeah, I get it, it's probably a bad idea," Tony said, in a casual voice that would've fooled anyone but her. She could clearly hear the undertone of disappointment. He'd misunderstood her hesitation.

"No, it's not," she replied quickly. "I think it's a brilliant idea, on one condition."

"What's that?"

"You take the month off from superheroing."

"That's extortion!"

"No, that's self-preservation. The constant worry and anxiety would be very bad for my health."

"Hm," he said thoughtfully, twisting his mouth this way and that. "Well, of course, I completely trashed my suit during this mission. I need to design a new version, one that's able to handle things like that nano-bug, and that's going to take some time. A week?"

"Two weeks, minimum."

"Okay, two weeks, if I'm allowed to do test runs during that time."

"All right. You have yourself a deal, Mr. Stark."

"Very good, Miss Potts." Tony let go of her hand, and gripped it again to shake it solemnly. "I'll have my secretary send you the papers so you can sign them - but hey, you are my secretary! Damn. Is it all right if we stick to the oral agreement?"

She shook her head at him, sat up, and pulled him into a hug.

  


* * *

  


House spent half of their return trip asleep, and the rest of it arguing with the S.H.I.E.L.D. medical team. He had to give it to them that their airborne sickbay was pretty well-equipped, but that couldn't cover the fact that they were a bunch of incompetent imbeciles.

No, he had not considered changing his medication, he was perfectly happy with his Vicodin. No, there was nothing unclear or uncertain about his or Potts's current condition, this was a previously known illness and had progressed just as expected, they were getting better already, and there was no need for intensive monitoring. By all means, do whatever you want with Potts, go on and do a lumbar puncture and a lung biopsy just for the kicks, if you feel like it, but he didn't need to have his vitals taken every five minutes.

He kept ranting until he got so tired and bored that he decided sleeping would be more interesting. A few hours later he woke up and started again from the top. At some point, Stark stopped by to ask how much he'd need to pay to silence House, but House told him no amount of earthly riches could make him stop his holy quest against idiocy, and Stark returned to his vigil by Potts's bedside.

They landed in Los Angeles first, to refuel and to drop off Stark and his gang. House hated goodbyes. They were nothing but an annoyance, a charade, a bunch of empty words. Yet another example of the countless stupid rules and norms that everyone was supposed to follow, even though they made no sense. He figured the best course of action would be to pretend he was asleep.

There was the sound of footsteps and the squeal of a wheelchair's wheels, which stopped right next to him.

"House, I spent enough time stuck in that cell with you that I can tell you're not sleeping," Potts said.

"Damn," House cursed. He opened his eyes and grimaced at the trio standing by his bedside. "All right. You're glad this is over, and you're happy to get rid of me. Nice talking to you. Off you go."

"Hey, look, Superdoc is using his telepathic abilities!" Stark quipped. Rhodes rolled his eyes at him.

Potts ignored them, staring intently at House. "I also spent enough time with you that I can tell you're not half as cynical as you want everyone to believe. Now, I'm definitely not going to say I'll miss you, but I am saying that there could've been worse people to get kidnapped with. I think we did pretty well. So, thanks, for the company and everything."

Stark glanced at Potts with what looked like disbelief, and then turned to look at House. "I completely understand if you're no longer interested in working for me after this experience. No need to decide right away, just let me know. Of course, I'll compensate you for -"

"No longer interested? This was the first time this job really got interesting! Well, the second time, if you count that episode when you got infected with the nanovirus. Oh, no, you're not getting rid of me this easily."

Stark nodded, a twisted smile on his lips. "Good for you. You do realize that you already know too much, don't you? There's no way I could just cut you loose. I might have to eliminate you if you really wanted to quit. So, I'll be in touch."

"Have Potts call me instead, I like her more than you, and she's a lot prettier."

"You're saying you're going to miss me?" Potts smirked at House.

"If saying that makes you go away, I am," House replied. "Though the truth is, I'll just miss the sponge baths."

"Okay, we're leaving," Stark said, and started pushing Potts's wheelchair towards the exit.

"Bye, House," Potts said.

Rhodes, walking alongside them, gave House a slightly awkward wave - the two of them had barely talked during the whole adventure, after all. Then, they disappeared from view.

Sometime later, when House was half-asleep again, the plane took off. Even though he would never, ever have admitted it to anyone, he felt a bit lonely. He'd gotten so used to being in the same room with Potts all the time that he did sort-of feel like something was missing when she wasn't around. He also felt strangely empty now that he wasn't hurting and wasn't stuck in a desperate struggle for survival anymore. Like life had suddenly become too easy.

Someone might have expected that an experience like this would've change him somehow, but he knew better than that. Maybe Stark had had his eyes opened in Afghanistan, but it took more than a bunch of crazy terrorists to change Gregory House. Soon, he'd be back home, and back to being his usual miserable self, solving puzzles, mistreating patients, harassing his friends, generally being a pain in the ass, as if none of this had never happened.

Finally, they landed at Newark, and Sitwell pushed House's wheelchair out of the plane and into the terminal, to a group waiting for him: Wilson, Cuddy, and both his teams, the old and the new one. 

House glared at them. "If there's one thing I hate even more than goodbyes, it's homecomings."


End file.
